Voodoo puts a new spin on swing

Thursday, Oct. 25, 2007 | 7:44 a.m.

Who: Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: The Springs Preserve amphitheater, 333 S. Valley View Blvd.

Tickets: $25 and $35; call 822-7700 or Ticketmaster at 474-4000 or go to springspreserve.org

From left to right:

Andy Rowley, saxophone

Joshua Levy, piano

Kurt Sodergren, drums

Scotty Morris, vocals and guitar

Glen Marhevka, trumpet

Karl Hunter, saxophone and clarinet Dirk Shumaker, bass

In the age of flannel and grunge, this band of nattily dressed musicians strolled into bars wearing zoot suits, ties and fedoras and began playing music that was old before they were born.

Swing.

The music of Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman.

"We'd play in these small clubs and people would trip out when we walked in in our suits and hats," Big Bad Voodoo Daddy trumpeter Glen "The Kid" Marhevka recalled by phone from Los Angeles. "We'd start playing and they'd look at us a little bit and after a song or two they'd get smiles on their faces and start dancing and having fun."

That's the way Big Bad Voodoo Daddy got its start in the late '80s and early '90s. It played clubs in Los Angeles. Then it became a West Coast phenomenon, playing from San Francisco to San Diego. Every Wednesday night it performed at the Derby, a nightclub in Hollywood.

"A lot of actors and directors came to see us," Marhevka said. "We were getting pretty well-known on the Hollywood scene."

The band's fame spread to the East Coast.

"It just grew and grew to what it is today," Marhevka said. "We've been playing nonstop ever since" - since performing "You & Me & the Bottle Makes Three Tonight (Baby)" and "Go Daddy-O" in the 1996 cult film "Swingers." The movie was written by and starred Jon Favreau, a Big Bad Voodoo Daddy fan and Wednesday-night regular at the Derby.

The movie shot the band to stardom, and to a halftime performance at Super Bowl XXXIII in Miami in 1999.

"After 'Swingers' came out we sold millions of albums, but the media frenzy stopped about 2000," Marhevka said. "But we're the type of band that plays all the time anyway. We just kept on doing our thing, what we did before and after the media attention. Our fans have kept on coming out. We're as busy as ever - not with the Super Bowl, but we're playing at performing arts centers, big amphitheaters, jazz festivals, concert halls. You name it and we do it."

Even historic sites.

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy will perform Saturday at the Springs Preserve, a 180-acre natural history site known as the birthplace of Las Vegas.

"This band, you get in front of people and it's great," Marhevka said. "That's our forte, playing in front of people."

Scott Morris and Kurt Sodergren formed the band in 1989.

The success of the group's two self-produced albums, "Big Bad Voodoo Daddy" and "Whatchu' Want for Christmas," led to a contract with Capitol Records in 1997 and to its music being heard in dozens of films such as "Three to Tango" (1999) and "The Wild" (2006).

When the band formed it performed mostly blues but gravitated to its members' love of jazz and swing.

"In the beginning it was just a three-piece band - guitar, bass and drums," Marhevka said. "Then they started adding horns."

Marhevka has played trumpet in big bands since the seventh grade. When he got the call to join Big Bad Voodoo Daddy he was freelancing, performing around Los Angeles, at Disneyland, on cruise ships.

"All types of jazz groups," he said. "That was my forte, playing in big jazz bands. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was a perfect fit for me."

Even though the musicians play swing music, it's their own. Band members like the style of Calloway, Ellington and Goodman, but they adapt it to their own songs, for the most part.

"We put a different sort of spin on it from the traditional big band," Marhevka said. "We make it a bit more modern, more of a rock show."

Most of the music the band plays is original.

"Except for Cab Calloway's 'Minnie the Moocher,' which we play at every show," Marhevka said. "We've done that from Day One."

Another frequent cover tune the band does is "I Want to Be Just Like You," which Louis Prima sang in Disney's cartoon movie "The Jungle Book."

The band is working on a Calloway tribute album it hopes will be out shortly after the first of the year.

"We're talking with the estate about using some of his vocal tracks with our music," Marhevka said. "Cab Calloway would have been 100 years old on Christmas Day."

Calloway died in 1994. If he were still around he probably would be one of the biggest fans of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.