Summer Swing at the Bing on 7-26

By Janice Berman

In a turn—or maybe a twirl—away from Bing Concert Hall’s usual programs, Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, a local institution, are playing not the auditorium but the lobby. The band’s sizzling jazz will come complete with swing dance instruction from two Stanford grads, Paul Csonka and Rachel Liaw.

Smith, a one-of-a-kind diva in full retro-swing mode, and her brassy nine-piece orchestra will perform in
the unusual circular Gunn Atrium with its views of
the campus. In addition,
the evening will feature the added amenity of food trucks stationed outside the hall.

After all, the Bing draws
a diverse audience, but it could always use an even larger one, and this type of programming is a great way to make contact, according to Stanford Live’s executive director, Wiley Hausam. “We got a sense that there would be an interest in summer performances,” said Hausam “It’s an opportunity to reach out to audiences
we don’t customarily serve, with more-informal and lighter programming.”

He noted that this summer’s lineup still highlights important artists though. With performances by La Santa Cecilia, which won a Grammy this year; singer- songwriter Shawn Colvin, who wrote the hit “Sunny Came Home,” among others; and the classical and Latin guitarist Miloš Karadaglic ́, “we will test the waters,” said Hausam. “I hope we will attract the Latin community and also a younger audience.” Shows like these “could become part of the mix” year-round. But Hausam added, “We wouldn’t start doing singer-songwriters and omit the string quartets, for example.” Indeed, two Midsummer Mozart concerts punctuate this summer’s lighter fare. Citing the popular pricing, lower than the rest of the year, as well as the casual spirit embodied by the food trucks, wine, and beer, Hausam hopes Stanford
can emulate the success of Lincoln Center Out of Doors. This festival has grown summer by summer, drawing in many New Yorkers who never attend performances at the Metropolitan Opera House, Koch Theater,
or Avery Fisher Hall. Midsummer Night Swing, the weekly dance party on Lincoln Center’s plaza, inspired Stanford Live’s invitation to Lavay Smith and the Skillet Lickers. The band has played Lincoln Center festivals and other New York venues as well as around the country, in Canada, and in Europe.

The band’s brand of
music and dancing are “intoxicating,” Smith said from her home in San Francisco’s Mission District. People who have heard
her often agree. Born in 1967 in “a working class place called Lakewood” in Southern California, Smith began putting on talent shows as a child and singing
in school plays, taking up the guitar at 16. Her father, a naval shipyard worker, and grandfather sang in the 1934 Chicago World’s Fair. “My grandfather sang like Fred Astaire and my father like Bing Crosby,” she said.

When she was 12, her family moved to the Philippines, and in her teens, she sang
in “Sin City,” she laughed, spelling it out for good measure, “where they get down.” The town’s
real name is Olongapo. Smith noted, “I was a real rebellious child, looking for the coolest, newest thing.”

Everything old became new again when Smith found what she was looking for in recordings by Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Dinah Washington. She explained, “They were expressing
what I was feeling.” She returned to Orange County, California, for high school but spent most of her free time in Hollywood. In 1989, living in San Francisco and pursuing jazz singing, she met pianist Chris Siebert, her life partner, and they put together their band. Today Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers has Siebert on piano, six horns, a bass, and drums. The musicians’ ages range from 30s to 70s; their resumes include the bands of Count Basie and Duke Ellington—whose “delicious harmonies” are a Smith focal point —Ray Charles, Santana, Van Morrison, Esther Phillips, and Big Mama Thornton. The Skillet Lickers’ Ellington transcriptions are by former Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra arranger David Berger, “because he’s the best,” said Smith.

Smith’s own distinctive performances are sui generis. She manages to
mix frank sexuality with sassy humor and a knowing, strong-yet-tender voice.
Her luscious red lipstick, pale skin, dark hair, and curvaceous figure that can hold up even the lowest of her low-slung bodices (she buys her distinctive gowns online) all add up to an alluring look that’s topped off with a flower in her hair, a Billie Holiday tribute—“people started bringing them, so I started wearing them,” she said.

Her theme song, written with Siebert and Berger, is titled “Everybody’s Talkin’ ‘Bout Miss Thing.” Jazz writer Sean Daly described one of her New York shows as “an unforgettable display of bop, boogie-woogie and barrelhouse blues.” No wonder the tunes are so danceable.

And should you want to
try dancing, Paul Csonka (Stanford University Ph.D., class of 2012) and Rachel Liaw (Stanford University B.A., class of 2011) will
be on hand to help. They began dancing together at school. Both were active
in Swing Time, a Stanford- based performance troupe. (You can catch their act,
of course, on YouTube). Csonka, a lanky Oregonian who works at Google X, had never danced until he went to Stanford. Today
he seems unstoppable. He’s not alone. Swing Kids had 600 members, he said, 200 of them active ones. “It’s rare to be in a class with somebody who doesn’t
take social dance,” Csonka added. “Stanford has maybe 40 dance groups.” And engineers (his major was mechanical engineering) seem drawn to social dance.

At the weekly Wednesday Night Hop, a big group meeting in a rented dance studio in Mountain View, about 75 percent of the students of all ages circling the floor as they learned the Charleston were engineers. “It’s partly because we’re
in Silicon Valley,” Csonka stated. “But it’s also the desire to visualize patterns and move spatially.” Couples can be coed or not; the instructor asks everyone to move forward to a new partner at the end of each phrase. Those who lead may become those who follow, a good way to learn any dance.

At the Bing, Csonka and Liaw will talk about the background of swing, introduce some common terms, and teach a little basic footwork for free before the actual dance party begins. “From there, we’ll start teaching figures, a couple of turns for leaders and followers, and at least one cool and flashy move,” said Csonka. “The goal is to get people having some fun and dancing to the band.”

The evening may even provide benefits beyond amazing music and a fabulous night of dancing. According to Smith, “If you want to meet a very nice guy with a good job, you’d better start swing dancing!” Would Miss Thing misspeak?