Their fired-up jump blues sound defined
the direction of the early neo-swing movement. The band struck a nerve with the kind of people—you may have been one yourself—who’ve
always loved swing music but who somehow felt they were born in the wrong half of the century. “People just resigned themselves,”
says Achor, “saying, ‘There’s just never going to be anybody like-minded at all ever anywhere like me. I’m the loneliest guy
in the world with my Frank Sinatra records.’”
But there was one town that got turned on by Royal Crown Revue like no other. The city was San Francisco, and when the band
first played there, they helped take the swing renaissance to a whole new level.
SCENESTER CENTRAL
What the Royal Crown Revue happened upon in the Bay Area was a nascent and wildly enthusiastic retro scene congregating in
the most surprising of places. Housed in a one-time gay bar right near the corner of former hippie central, Haight and Ashbury,
the Club Deluxe opened in 1989, coincidentally the same year that RCR came together. The art deco-style bar was populated
with a cast of characters right out of an old-time variety show. The colorfully named Vise Grip was the doorman. Lounge acts
like Mr. Lucky—who had an act called the Mr. Lucky Experience that performed Martin Denny-esque covers of Tears for Fears
songs and disco versions of “The Girl from Ipanema” — and Connie Champagne and Her Tiny Bubbles would sing there regularly.
Another former punk named Timmie Hesla, who had started a Basie-and-Ellington-influenced swing band back in 1985, played gigs
there as well. And a twenty-one-year-old Morty Okin, the short but irrepressible trumpet player who would go on to form the
rockin’ swing band the New Morty Show, showed up at the club soon after moving away from Michigan. “It was very, very underground,” says Okin. “There was basically
a suit-and-tie dress code. It was like walking into a time warp. And everyone was basically drinking like fish and having
a great time.”
On the club’s tiny stage, in front of the spot’s even tinier dance floor, a small group of jazz musicians played standards
on open-mike Sundays. Vise and Morty used to sit in with them, and in 1991 Vise started his own swing band, inspired mostly
by Cab Calloway, called St. Vitus Dance. Pretty soon retro music shows began happening elsewhere around town. In 1991 Lavay Smith, a more straight-ahead jazz singer who’s now a star of the swing movement, became a regular performer at the new Café du Nord.
And the historic Bimbo’s 365, a grand art deco nightclub from the thirties that had once hosted such greats as Prima, Ellington,
and Buddy Rich, reopened and started holding semiregular swing nights too. There were also a series of after-hours garage
parties. Modeled after speakeasies, the events occasionally had invites that were just matchbooks with location information
printed on the inside. “They’d start around midnight and go until about seven in the morning in a big warehouse space. There
wasn’t as much of a division as there is now between swing and rockabilly. It was all one big crowd,” says Nancy Myers, who
threw many of them.
San Francisco differed from Los Angeles, however, in that from the start the clothing was almost as important as the music.
The Bay Area went mad for retro threads. Forties straight-skirt dresses, double-breasted pinstripe suits, fedoras, and wide
ties began making appearances, alongside fifties rockabilly jeans and ducktails and sixties sharkskin jackets. “People used
to show up in real vintage clothes because that’s what they could afford. It was cheap. It didn’t matter if there was a stain
on it,” says Myers. “I have a great photograph that to me describes the whole scene at the time. It has a woman in the background
with a mohawk and a big pin on her jacket that says ‘Bitch,’ and a couple of girls on the other side
the direction of the early neo-swing movement. The band struck a nerve with the kind of people—you may have been one yourself—who’ve
always loved swing music but who somehow felt they were born in the wrong half of the century. “People just resigned themselves,”
says Achor, “saying, ‘There’s just never going to be anybody like-minded at all ever anywhere like me. I’m the loneliest guy
in the world with my Frank Sinatra records.’”
But there was one town that got turned on by Royal Crown Revue like no other. The city was San Francisco, and when the band
first played there, they helped take the swing renaissance to a whole new level.
SCENESTER CENTRAL
What the Royal Crown Revue happened upon in the Bay Area was a nascent and wildly enthusiastic retro scene congregating in
the most surprising of places. Housed in a one-time gay bar right near the corner of former hippie central, Haight and Ashbury,
the Club Deluxe opened in 1989, coincidentally the same year that RCR came together. The art deco-style bar was populated
with a cast of characters right out of an old-time variety show. The colorfully named Vise Grip was the doorman. Lounge acts
like Mr. Lucky—who had an act called the Mr. Lucky Experience that performed Martin Denny-esque covers of Tears for Fears
songs and disco versions of “The Girl from Ipanema” — and Connie Champagne and Her Tiny Bubbles would sing there regularly.
Another former punk named Timmie Hesla, who had started a Basie-and-Ellington-influenced swing band back in 1985, played gigs
there as well. And a twenty-one-year-old Morty Okin, the short but irrepressible trumpet player who would go on to form the
rockin’ swing band the New Morty Show, showed up at the club soon after moving away from Michigan. “It was very, very underground,” says Okin. “There was basically
a suit-and-tie dress code. It was like walking into a time warp. And everyone was basically drinking like fish and having
a great time.”
On the club’s tiny stage, in front of the spot’s even tinier dance floor, a small group of jazz musicians played standards
on open-mike Sundays. Vise and Morty used to sit in with them, and in 1991 Vise started his own swing band, inspired mostly
by Cab Calloway, called St. Vitus Dance. Pretty soon retro music shows began happening elsewhere around town. In 1991 Lavay Smith, a more straight-ahead jazz singer who’s now a star of the swing movement, became a regular performer at the new Café du Nord.
And the historic Bimbo’s 365, a grand art deco nightclub from the thirties that had once hosted such greats as Prima, Ellington,
and Buddy Rich, reopened and started holding semiregular swing nights too. There were also a series of after-hours garage
parties. Modeled after speakeasies, the events occasionally had invites that were just matchbooks with location information
printed on the inside. “They’d start around midnight and go until about seven in the morning in a big warehouse space. There
wasn’t as much of a division as there is now between swing and rockabilly. It was all one big crowd,” says Nancy Myers, who
threw many of them.
San Francisco differed from Los Angeles, however, in that from the start the clothing was almost as important as the music.
The Bay Area went mad for retro threads. Forties straight-skirt dresses, double-breasted pinstripe suits, fedoras, and wide
ties began making appearances, alongside fifties rockabilly jeans and ducktails and sixties sharkskin jackets. “People used
to show up in real vintage clothes because that’s what they could afford. It was cheap. It didn’t matter if there was a stain
on it,” says Myers. “I have a great photograph that to me describes the whole scene at the time. It has a woman in the background
with a mohawk and a big pin on her jacket that says ‘Bitch,’ and a couple of girls on the other side
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