A quickie for all you hepcats out there...

August 7, 2008 2:58 PM

What's this famous jazz/big band/swing dancing song?

I saw a rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond recently ("Dancing with Debra") that dealt with the swing dancing craze that was so popular back in the 90s. The penultimate scene of the episode was largely wordless, with the actions of the characters choreographed with a very iconic swing dancing number.

I'd like to know what this piece was called or who made it, but my Google fu has utterly failed. I've searched iTunes, browsed Wikipedia for the chart-topping big band hits, even given the "hum that tune" Midomi service a whirl, but no dice.

I did, however, manage to snag a copy of the episode and recorded part of the song for the hive mind. Here's the clip:

http://boomp3.com/listen/bzso6ewai_f/swing-music

I hope the laugh track isn't too distracting...

posted by Rhaomi to media & arts (8 answers total)

I think it's Sing Sing Sing. A Benny Goodman tune.
posted by monkeystronghold at 3:04 PM on August 7, 2008

Yup, it's Sing Sing Sing.
posted by PatoPata at 3:09 PM on August 7, 2008

My favorite, modern, version of this track can be found on the Swing Kids soundtrack.
posted by nomisxid at 3:22 PM on August 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

Oddly enough, this video of "Sing, Sing, Sing" (performed by Benny Goodman, no less) was the first thing I came across while trying to track down the song. It did sound very similar, but none of the music in the video sounded like what I had in mind, especially not like the melody at the beginning of the audio clip I linked to. Maybe the piece in the video is an abridged version? It does end rather abruptly.

At any rate, I looked the song up on iTunes and it is the one I was looking for. Thanks, everybody.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:03 PM on August 7, 2008

Also, here's a copy of the "Swing Kid's" version of the song that nomisxid mentioned, if anybody's curious to hear it. It matches up to what I was looking for much better than the video did.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:24 PM on August 7, 2008

It's definitely "Sing Sing Sing," but it's a modern recording, not the Benny Goodman version, and it kind of combines some of the themes of the song into a shorter piece.

Although "Sing, Sing, Sing" is mostly associated with Benny Goodman, it was actually written by Louis Prima in 1936.

If you like weird early 90s industrial music, here's my favorite version of Sing, Sing, Sing.
posted by mmoncur at 7:42 PM on August 7, 2008

Hmmm... I just noticed the page I linked to is broken. I got it through Seeqpod, and their search results can act pretty odd sometimes. If you want to hear the song, just search the site for "swing kids", it's the first result.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:40 PM on August 7, 2008

I figured the answer would be "Sing Sing Sing" before I even listened to your sound clip. :) It's sort of the iconic swing number, isn't it?

Thanks mmmoncur for the link to the industrial one -- that's pretty cool!
posted by litlnemo at 1:50 AM on August 8, 2008