DJ Ryan Swift

Today the NYTimes published a great writeup about swing dancing in NYC, and heavily featured Yehoodi.com’s Frim Fram Jam, which you probably know I help run.

THERE are swinging parties in Manhattan nearly ever night. The trick is in knowing where to find them.

Take a recent Thursday: Sandwiched between a Blarney Stone and a liquor shop on Eighth Avenue just south of Penn Station and up four flights of stairs was a scene invisible to most New Yorkers. Wild and sweaty, loud and crowded, it featured scores of smiling, ever-shifting couples energetically executing the kinetic choreography of the Lindy Hop, the Charleston, the jitterbug , the Balboa, the collegiate shag. They danced East Coast and West Coast styles and bluesy New Orleans freestyle.

This party, the Frim Fram Jam, is a weekly event organized by the local chapter of a national swing dance network called Yehoodi, after “Who’s Yehoodi (Yehudi)?,” a song popularized by Cab Calloway. Held at a studio called You Should Be Dancing and drawing more than 150 people a week, the Frim Fram Jam is a popular destination within a throbbing, thriving urban subculture: Manhattan’s swing-dance demimonde.

The article quotes several NYC regulars and also features Swing46, Swing Remix, and the NYSDS and is some good visibility for the scene, even though it states the revival is 3 years old (?) and unfortunately gets Gordon Webster’s name wrong.

Check out the full piece on NYTimes.com, including my crotchety quote about feeling old (that I don’t actually remember saying), right before the description of a “trim and energetic” 63-year-old.

John Dokes recently performed at Swing 46, a jazz club in Times Square, to promote his first CD, “John Dokes Sings, George Gee Swings.”

George Whipple: What is swing music?

Dokes: It’s music that kind of makes you move, connect with your partner and share an experience. We just love telling stories to music and getting people to dance to them. It just feels great.

Dokes’ songs span generations.

“It was started in the late 1920s and this is big band music, it’s the best music from that era. We even picked even songs from the ’70s. We picked ‘Walk On By’ by Burt Bacharach,” says Dokes.

Another hit that Dokes sang was “Alright, Okay, You Win,” by Maymie Watts and Sid Wyche.

Whipple: Tell me a little bit about some of the influences on you and your music.

Dokes: I actually got into singing influenced by Miss Dawn Hampton. She is my dance partner, she’s 82 years old of loving goodness. And she heard me singing one day while we were dancing and she said, you need to get your “expletive” up there and start singing, and so I did.

Dokes will be at Swing 46 in the Times Square area every Tuesday night. Come check him out, and you won’t be disappointed.