Daddies Don’t Want To Be A Fad

In the world created by the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, the corners are dark, the dives are seedy and the characters are most often shady.

There is the “Drunk Daddy” who mercilessly beats his children.

There is the “Ding Dong Daddy of the D-car Line” who “did 16 women wrong” because he “could not restrain himself when he saw a nice caboose.”

“Mister White Keys,” a braggart and snob, is “sheltered in tax brackets higher than an angel’s cloud” yet still squeezes money from the poor.

This place - sung into existence by the Northwest’s best swing band - is rarely pretty. And it certainly isn’t the nostalgic dance hall of yore where guys happily swung their gals.

But it isn’t supposed to be.

“I do not want to be part of a retro fad,” says Steve Perry, mastermind behind the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies.

And who can blame him.

Perry has spent the last eight years doggedly advancing swing music - years in which it was certainly not the in thing to do.

But now, as swing bursts upon the nation’s consciousness in a kind of hipster renaissance, Perry has begun to worry - worry that the Johnny-come-latelys Lindy Hopping to center stage are in danger of making this swing rebirth more of a stillbirth.

Why? Because many of them are not reinventing. They’re simply imitating.

“If bands just form to be background music for swing dancing or just play exactly ‘20s or ‘30s jazz, the scene will lack vitality and die,” Perry predicts.

For those who may not have heard there was a swing scene - much less one in danger of fading into oblivion - here’s an update: The music that got our grandparents jitterbuggin’ has again become chic in clubs across the country. In the West Coast’s bigger cities, hipsters are shedding their moshing boots in droves, favoring instead two-tone wing tips and zoot suits.

Although this is a relatively recent phenomenon, it so happens that Perry and the Daddies, of Eugene, Ore., have been doing the swing thing since 1989 - well before the new swing scene’s poster child, the Squirrel Nut Zippers, even existed as a band.

Perry, who formed the Daddies after dropping out of the University of Oregon’s chemistry program, was determined to take his music on its own path from the start.

“It just seems like the whole music scene is a giant high school. I didn’t want to be a stoner or a jock or anything like that,” Perry says. “The way not to be in a scene at that time was, first of all, to play swing.”

But Perry and a crew of six band members (including three horn players) have purposely fled the confines of the old-fashioned swing straightjacket by taking the time-honored style and slipping it a mickey - i.e., a shot of ska, a hit of punk, a dose of rock and an entire fifth of ‘90s attitude.

“I just don’t feel comfortable being creatively handcuffed,” Perry says.

A storyteller at heart, Perry creates gritty portraits of losers, failed lovers and unlikely heroes from all social strata. Then he sets his tales to a horn-driven swing bump often sexy, sometimes raunchy, and almost always feverishly danceable.

In “Here Comes the Snake,” the bright horns and dusky vocals wrap themselves serpentinely together as Perry sings, “Here comes the snake and he circles your leg/He comes to play and make your body parts shake baby.”

While retro bands like the Squirrel Nut Zippers sing lyrics like “I’ve been searching all over for someone/I can tell my troubles to/ Searching all the wide world over/Is it you?” Perry sings, “A bum was in my trash/pickin’ out all the cans/ firewater burnin up his poor swollen glands/the Lysol and Listerine/it went to his head/he eats boot black rotted on a piece of white bread.”

Although it is a murky world here, Perry’s songs are rarely depressing.

“I want it to be about compassion and honor and strength of character so people get inspired by these characters, or else they learn something about a stupid character,” he says.

In “Drunk Daddy,” a feverish tune sung from an abused child’s point of view, the child triumphantly sings, “OK dad you can beat me but you’ll never beat me.” And the aforementioned Ding Dong Daddy gets his due when the women catch on to his floozy ways.

On stage, the Daddies sweat an enthrallingly spastic energy. Perry is like a maniac-controlled marionette, performing a non-stop jig fascinating in its relentlessness.

Still, despite their immense talent and pioneering spirit, the Daddies have watched as newcomers like the Zippers have been bum-rushed right past them to the head of the class.

It wasn’t until this summer that the Daddies finally received long-overdue recognition when Mojo Records - home to Reel Big Fish and Goldfinger and a subsidiary of biggie label Universal Records - signed them up.

The first of this month, Mojo re-released “Zoot Suit Riot,” a compilation of the Daddies best swing songs plus four new tracks. Mojo also is scheduled to release a new Daddies album early next year. The contract specifies a third album as well.

Mojo president Jay Rifkin said he was taken with Perry’s desire to avoid the nostalgia trap.

“I don’t think you get people excited about what you’re doing if you’re living in the past,” Rifkin says. “Even the style (the Daddies) dress on stage, they have a whole zoot suit kind of era but it’s twisted. There’s something that doesn’t look like ‘Oh, I’m seeing an old jazz band here.”’

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CONCERT The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies will play an all-ages show at Area 51 at 9 p.m. Friday. The club is located in the Avalon Dance Studio at 117 E. Boone. Tickets are $8, available at the door.