Tuesday afternoon on The AIR we deliver two brand-new episodes of The Swing Shift that were supposed to debut last week before a power outage hit right when I was getting ready to start recording the shows.  If you wanna hear 100 Years of Swing, interrupted, you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to this convenient embedded radio player…

The Swing Shift has made it to 100 episodes, and we’re marking the occasion with a four-part series that celebrates 100 years of Swing Music. Tuesday afternoon you can hear episode 101, followed a 4 PM by episode 102. Episode 100 debuted two weeks ago, today, but as I mentioned, we wuz waylaid by a sudden power outage. You may recall me complaining about it a lot last week.

Since day one, the tagline for The Swing Shift has been “The Best Swing Music from the past Century!” As we started to get close to our 100th episode, I decided to put that into practice, and do a three-part series that would bring us Swing tunes from the biggest names of each of the last ten decades. We’d devote episodes 99, 100 and 101 to this almost educational jitterbug through the history of Swing. That was the plan. When it came time to execute that plan, I discovered that I was going to have to expand this series to four episodes. So this week you’ll get parts one and two, and next week you’ll get parts three and four.

To be quite frank, after producing this four-part series, I am sorely disappointed that I didn’t have enough room to cover every important artist and orchestra, so in the coming weeks we plan to go back and fill in some of the gaps with shows that focus on particular years or decades or sub-genre or artists.  For now, we’ve got our two remaining episodes that cover Swing Music from 1980 to the present. Next week the plan is to do an entire episode devoted to the Women of Swing, so bear with me as I try to cover all of the best Swing Music of the last century.

At 3 PM our first new hour of The Swing Shift takes you back to the early days of the Swing Revival, as New Wave music mined the depths of that which had gone before, and a new generation exploded with a love of reborn Big Band and Jump Swing.  Check out this playlist:

The Swing Shift 101

the 1980s
Joe Jackson’s Jumpin’ Jive “We The Cats Shall Hep You”
Roman Holliday “Don’t Try To Stop It”
Pete Townshend “Face The Face (Live)”

1990s
Royal Crown Revue “Hey Pachuco”
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy “Cruel Spell”
Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers “Everybody’s Talking About Miss Thing”
Indigo Swing “The Indigo Swing”
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “Dr. Bones”
The Atomic Fireballs “The Man With The Hex”
Brian Setzer Orchestra “Sittin’ On It All The Time”
Lily Wild and Her Jumpin’ Jubilee Orchestra “Work Baby Work”
The New Morty Show “The Demon”
Johnny Favourite “Motorcycle”
Dem Brooklyn Bums “Boozin’ and a Cruisin'”
Squirrel Nut Zippers “Hell”
Keely Smith “Swing, Swing, Swing”

At 4 PM we bring you up to date, with a non-chronological collection of some of the best new Swing Music from the last two decades. Some of the Swing Revival bands are represented as grizzled veterans now that they have a couple of decades under their belt, and we get to hear a little Electro-Swing, second-generation Swing and new classic-sounding Big Band Swing. As you can see on this playlist:

The Swing Shift 102

the 2000s
Royal Crown Revue “Rockville”
Brian Setzer Orchestra “Pennsylvania 6-5000”
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy “Save My Soul”
Lady J and Her Bada Bing Band “EBAY”
Squirel Nut Zippers “Rusty Trombone”
Janet Klein “My Blue Bird’s Singing The Blues”
Pasadena Roof Orchestra “Stormy Weather”
Jack’s Cats “A Minor Interruption”
Tyler Pedersen “Sheb’s Struffle”
Joe Stilgoe “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You”
Jive Me “Miss Annie”
Hot Swing Sextet “A Smooth One”
Louis Prima Jr. “Go Let’s Go”
Joe Jackson “It Don’t Mean A Thing”

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 7 AM and 6 PM, Thursday at 2 PM, Saturday at 5 PM and Sunday at 10 AM, only on The AIR. You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each of our finest episodes, starting at Midnight Thursday and Sunday evenings.