Scene Stealers
Ridgetop SyncopatorsThe Ridgetop Syncopators, the latest project from longtime Bad Liver and local klezmer ambassador Mark Rubin, sometimes open their sets with “Faded Love,” but please don’t call them Western swing.
“Western swing meant what those guys out in California were doing, like Spade Cooley and Tex Williams,” says Rubin by phone from his day job, managing Violins Etc. “It was more of a genteel and urbane and uptown kind of sound.”
Rubin prefers the geographically more specific “Texas swing,” citing the “raw, unhinged” music of semiforgotten practitioners Milton Brown and Cliff Bruner. Further investigation led him to the Dallas String Band, an African-American ensemble that played street corners in Deep Ellum for tips in the Twenties.
“They did this wide variety of tunes, like Tin Pan Alley and popular ballads and blues,” Rubin says.
The Syncopators – Rubin on tenor guitar, banjo, and occasional fiddle; George Carver on lap steel; upright bassist Ricky Rees; clarinetist Ben Saffer; lead fiddler Sean Orr; and tenor saxman Mike Stinnett –likewise cherry-pick their repertoire from sources near and far, obscure and familiar. Sometimes surprisingly familiar.
“Every one of those Western swing bandleaders, when you asked them who their big hero was, it wasn’t Bob Wills,” Rubin says. “It was Bing Crosby.”
The Ridgetop Syncopators play 9pm Thursdays at the Longbranch Inn. Shorty Long follows.
This article appears in July 16 • 2004.