Music Appreciation

appalachiablue

(41,132 posts) Tue Dec 26, 2023, 01:44 PM Dec 2023

Hooked On Swing - Big Band Jazz Music - Larry Elgart. Swingjugend Youth, Nazi Germany

Last edited Tue Dec 26, 2023, 09:56 PM - Edit history (2)

Hitler hated American jazz music, so you know it's really good!
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.. Elgart's biggest exposure came in 1982, with the smash success of a recording titled "Hooked on Swing". The instrumental was a medley of swing jazz hits - "In the Mood", "Cherokee", "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree", "American Patrol", "Sing, Sing, Sing", "Don't Be That Way", "Little Brown Jug", "Opus #1", "Take the A Train", "Zing Went the Strings of My Heart" & "A String of Pearls. The recording made the US Billboard Pop Singles chart (No. 31) & Adult Contemp. chart (No. 20).. Hooked on Swing 2 was No. 89 on the album charts, & Larry was back to the jazz tour circuit. He continued to tour internationally & record into the 2000s...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Elgart
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⭐ The Swing Youth (German: Swingjugend) were a group of jazz & swing lovers in Germany formed in Hamburg in 1939. Primarily active in Hamburg & Berlin, they were composed of 14- to 21-year-old Germans, mostly middle or upper-class students, but also including some in the working class. They admired the "American way of life", defining themselves in swing music & opposing Nazism, esp. the Hitler Youth (German: Hitlerjugend). They loosely structured themselves into “clubs” with names such as the Harlem Club, the OK Gang, & the Hot Club. This underground subculture, distinctly nonconformist with a focus on African-American music, was active in the German youth scene. Despite being largely apolitical & unstructured, Swing Youth were targeted &, in some cases, repressed by the Nazi government.

.. The Swingjugend rejected the Nazi state, above all because of its ideology & uniformity, its militarism, the 'Führer principle' and the leveling Volksgemeinschaft (people's community). They experienced a massive restriction of their personal freedom. They rebelled against all this with jazz & swing, which stood for a love of life, self-determination, non-conformism, freedom, independence, liberalism, & internationalism.. the Swing Youth preferred to speak to each other in English rather than German as English was felt to be more "cool", a choice of language that vexed the authorities greatly...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swingjugend