[themoose]

Still swinging
Tammy Lloyd Clabby - For the Journal-Constitution
Sunday, April 23, 2006

After 10 hours of managing crews running heavy equipment at construction sites, Les Still comes home from work, washes up and heads for his dream job.

Leaving behind the noise of bulldozers and track loaders, Still, 51, picks up a baton, steps to the podium and strikes up his 1940s-style big band.

The Still Swinging Les Still Big Band is made up of 18 musicians and a vocal quartet, the Swing Shift. The 9-year-old band is one of about a half-dozen such groups in metro Atlanta and is the largest playing regular gigs on the Northside.

The band just made a return appearance as the headliner for the Atlanta Swing Era Dance Association, playing to a sold-out house at the Benson Center in Roswell.

"We had dancers from as far away as California and Canada," said association President Michael Cobb. "Many wanted to make sure the band would be back next year. They are a hidden jewel. We've heard the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and I'd put them at the same level --- one of the best on the East Coast."

The Roswell show followed an appearance at First United Methodist Church of Marietta in what the band hopes will become a regular Valentine's Day ball.

This summer, the band is scheduled at the amphitheater at Big Canoe on July 1 and returns July 28 to Marietta Square for the city's concert series. The band will make its eighth appearance this year for the annual Veterans Day Ball in Atlanta in November.

Most have day jobs

Only a few in the group are professional musicians. Most have day jobs as business consultants, CPAs or church music directors. One trumpet player, Marty Martin, runs a welding company he inherited from an uncle.

"Marty has been known to show up at rehearsal with his face all smoked up and white spots where he wore the goggles," Still said with a laugh. "But his version of Louis Armstrong's 'What a Wonderful World' is by far our most popular song. He often gets a standing ovation."

Still's wife, Candy, is one of current school band directors or assistant directors in the Still Swinging Band, including five from Cobb County schools.

She's the band director at Pine Mountain Middle School in Kennesaw and the organizer of the Swing Shift. "I think our favorite song is 'Chattanooga Choo-Choo,' " she said. "Few people know the importance of the song. It was the first recording ever to go gold by selling a million copies."

Back to family business

Sherry Edwards of Alpharetta, the lead vocalist for Swing Shift, has an extensive background in music education and musical theater. She was a high school and middle school choral director for nine years in Mississippi and Georgia.

Les Still got the music bug early, too. "When I was little we watched 'The Lawrence Welk Show' on TV," recalled Still, a Cobb native who graduated from McEachern High School. "I would go get my dad's trombone from under the bed and dream of one day playing in a big band."

He played in the Jacksonville State University jazz band, graduated and taught high school in Alabama before landing a job in 1979 as band director at Pebblebrook High School.

Married and with two young girls, Still was $1,200 in debt to his parents and felt forced to leave the job. "I started work in July with the marching band, but my first check did not come until October," he explained. "I lasted until March of the following year. I just could not take care of the family on $13,500 a year."

He returned to work with his father and brothers in what is now a healthy construction business, Still Construction Co. But the dream of a musical career stayed with him, and he kept his skills sharp by playing the trombone and singing with his church choir.

"I kept watching for a sign. Then in the mid-1990s I noticed the TV commercials began using a big band sound. The Brian Setzer Orchestra came on the scene with 'Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.' I told my wife the time was right."

But Candy Still was pessimistic. "Oh my gosh, here we go," she recalls thinking. "But he was right."

Young like the music

Les Still points to recent gigs in Roswell and elsewhere as evidence of renewed interest in swing-era music.

"These are not old folks," he said. "They are mostly in their 20s.

"In January we played for the Georgia Tech Dance Association, and there must have been 500 people who danced all night. At the Swing Era Dance Association last year, we felt like rock stars. We did not want to quit."
_________________
J. Michael Cobb
President, Atlanta Swing-Era Dance Association