Ward Swingle RIP

[BillF]

Guardian obituary:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jan/21/ward-swingle

[GA Russell]

About 1996 I got a new album of theirs called "a capella" I think. I enjoyed it very much, but it was very different from their '60s style.

I now see that the album I was referring to was called Mood Swings. The record label was called a capella.

http://www.amazon.com/Mood-Swings-Swingle-Singers/dp/B0000E1WN7/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421962870&sr=8-1&keywords=swingle+singers+mood+swings

[Teasing the Korean]

Thank you all for that really interesting discussion. TTK sure is right when he says my point of view is an over-simplification, but somehow it was my impression then.....

Understood.

From my perspective in the US, the Swingles sound - which was pretty ubiquitous in the 1960s - was like the musical equivalent of how Europe was visually portrayed in the "foreign" films that I loved watching as a kid, even though I didn't understand anything about them. There would always be these montage scenes that juxtaposed, for example, rococo fountains and ancient Roman ruins against images of Mini Coopers and stylish young Europeans. The mixing of jazz and classical in the Swingles for me reinforced that juxtaposition of a long, rich, cultural tradition against unabashed, bold modernism and modernity.

So much of the music recorded between, say, the late 1950s to about the mid-70s to me comes across as this crazy and irreverent tapestry of styles. It was like everything was up for grabs and the artists could make anything fit. And while some of this may have been driven by trendiness or a need to simply stand out, the best stuff always reflected optimism and possibility (for me, at least).

...the most irritating (to me) record in my collection is the Dizzy Gillespie with the Double Six.

HA! Not only a favorite of mine, but the version of "Tin Tin Deo" on that album is my very favorite rendition of that tune!

[GA Russell]

Am I correct in thinking that Burt Bacharach's Butch Cassidy soundtrack vocals were based on the Swingle Singers sound?

[Gheorghe]

Thank you all for that really interesting discussion. TTK sure is right when he says my point of view is an over-simplification, but somehow it was my impression then.....

Understood.

From my perspective in the US, the Swingles sound - which was pretty ubiquitous in the 1960s - was like the musical equivalent of how Europe was visually portrayed in the "foreign" films that I loved watching as a kid, even though I didn't understand anything about them. There would always be these montage scenes that juxtaposed, for example, rococo fountains and ancient Roman ruins against images of Mini Coopers and stylish young Europeans. The mixing of jazz and classical in the Swingles for me reinforced that juxtaposition of a long, rich, cultural tradition against unabashed, bold modernism and modernity.

So much of the music recorded between, say, the late 1950s to about the mid-70s to me comes across as this crazy and irreverent tapestry of styles. It was like everything was up for grabs and the artists could make anything fit. And while some of this may have been driven by trendiness or a need to simply stand out, the best stuff always reflected optimism and possibility (for me, at least).

...the most irritating (to me) record in my collection is the Dizzy Gillespie with the Double Six.

HA! Not only a favorite of mine, but the version of "Tin Tin Deo" on that album is my very favorite rendition of that tune!

Yeah, it´s really a nice little album, I still remember it was quite hard to find in my youth.

Anyway, Tin Tin Deo is one of my favourite tunes, it´s didn´t happen often that I heard a weak version of that tune.

And "One Bass Hit" on that album is also great, with Pierre Michelot.

It´s just a great combination, the Swingle Singers with Diz, Bud, Klook (and of course the great Pierre Michelot, who anyway was Bud´s bassist in Paris) , really a rare encounter.

[danasgoodstuff]

the Swingles always struck me as just inextricably odd, but so did many of those European films of the period...I hear much of the music of the period as irrepressably optimistic, I'm old enuff to have experienced it in real time as an unfolding of ever expanding possibility...but not them.