Websites & Blogs for West Coast Swing & Lindy Hop

I've look at a LOT of these sites since I'm researching the history of the dance. This "project" has taken be all the way back to where the Texas Tommy came from.
I'd say that this is pretty much hands down the best of them for history.
http://www.kclindyhop.org/
and more specifically
http://www.kclindyhop.org/history_b.htm

That's an excellent site that has Blair's Dance Terminology "page" which is based partly on her 1978 book, as well as a history section. Has anyone seen the article written in the Historical Chapter written for Norma Miller, in 2009??
I think the wikipedia article has some worthwhile information, too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Swing

http://www.coloradoswingdance.org/history.htm
So, it looks like people in Phoenix were dancing WCS to rhythm & blues before they were in Denver. Wonder what the Denver people were dancng WCS to? Note theat it is almost 1990.

What it means, too, is that they WEREN'T dancing to rhythm & blues in Denver prior to that incident. I'm going to look at the Craig Hutchinson stuff. He taught in Colorado in the early 70s, I think. He has a very long list of songs, but his book is dated late 80s (have to check to be sure, he had several editions)

Perhaps.
We both know that 100% of the past will never be know.
Now a word about "jump blues" and the like, which is often bandied about regarding early WCS.

Lionel Hampton recorded a stomping big band blues, "Flying Home," in 1942. Featuring a choked, screaming tenor sax performance, the song was a hit in the "race" category.[5] When released, however, Billboard described the tune as "an unusually swingy side" "with a bright bounce in the medium tempo and a steady drive maintained, it's a jumper that defies standing still". Billboard also notes the Benny Goodman had a hand in writing the tune "back in the old Goodman Sextet Days". Billboard goes on to state that "Apart from the fact that it is Lionel Hampton's theme, "Flying Home" is a sure-fire to make the youngsters shed their nickels-and gladly."[6] Five years later Billboard noted inclusion of "Flying Home" in a show that was "strictly for hepsters who go for swing and boogie, and beats in loud, hot unrelenting stylte a la Lionel Hampton." "...the Hampton band gave with everything, practically wearing itself out with such numbers as Hey Bop a Re Bop, Hamp Boogie and Flying Home..." [7]

In the 40s when this stuff was going on, the terms like "jump", "jump tune", etc, were used often for uptempo tunes. Note that they other than the first sentence, whcih was written by Robert Palmer decades later, nobody even mentioned that the song was a "blues".

P.S. Billboard is available though the Google Books project, and contains a wealth of information starting in the 40s (so far). Not WCS as a dance (so far), but music for sure.

Are you familiar with Hutchinson's Swing Dancer and the Swing Dance Encyclopedia?

Do you know about ILLIAD interlibrary loans?

It it most excellent!
Combine it with the WorldCat on line find anything in any library (in the US) system and you have an extremely powerful research tool.
GoogleBooks, too, will in many cases allow you to look inside books that they have scanned, and search, too. Some of the pages are left out, though, and that's where WorldCat and ILLIAD come in very handy.

Just pasted this from somewhere else. Listed book has a section on West Coast Swing. Other that the incorrect statement about Dean Collins, I don't remember much about it. Don't think it's a treasure trove or anything like that.

I recently came across a book "Social Dance in America" by Ralph G. Giordano published this year (2007). Page 95 states that Dean was on the cover of The New Yorker when he was 18 and Dancer of the Year. This is a new wrinkle, so I thought I'd check it out.
I went to the library and looked at covers of the New Yorker from 1934, 1935, and 1936. First I noticed that they always use drawings and not photographs. After looking at all covers for these years, no dancers. A librarian sat with me and verified my observations. So this brand new book has at least one incorrect statement.