Today WLBOTT learned something new. For all these years, we thought “The Swingle Singers” was short for “The Swinging Singles Singers” Wrongo Bongo.
The group’s founder was Ward Lamar Swingle (September 21, 1927 – January 19, 2015). So Ward was an equinox baby, born in Mobile, Alabama!
Born in Mobile, Alabama, Swingle studied music, particularly jazz, from a very young age. He learned clarinet, oboe and the piano as a child. He played in Mobile-area big bands before finishing high school. Swingle continued his music studies at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, from which he graduated summa cum laude in 1950. He also met a French-born violin student, Françoise Demorest, and the couple married in 1952.
Wikipedia
The Swingle Singers were formed in Paris in 1962 and directed originally by Ward Swingle (who once belonged to Mimi Perrin’s French vocal group Les Double Six). They began as session singers, mainly doing backing vocals for singers such as Charles Aznavour and Edith Piaf.
Wikipedia
The eight session singers sang through Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier as a sight-reading exercise and found the music to have a natural swing.
Wikipedia
Imagine using The Well-Tempered Clavier as a sight reading exercise? What’s next? Non-linear differential equations instead of counting sheep?
Live….Norway, 1978
The Swingles Live On!
By © Jörgens.mi, CC BY-SA 4.0
Simultaneously Terrifying and Very Cool
WLBOTT A Capella Archipelago
We want to get in on the lucrative A Capella market!
The IT team forms their own a Capella group: The Melodic Mainframes.
A Ca-beautiful!
