ONE HIT WONDERLAND: “Zoot Suit Riot” by Cherry Poppin’ Daddies
Was the swing revival always doomed to fail? Check out “Is There Still a Very Special Place in Hell for Matt Stone and Trey Parker …
Was the swing revival always doomed to fail? Check out “Is There Still a Very Special Place in Hell for Matt Stone and Trey Parker …
@ToddintheShadows
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
I feel like I need to give a shoutout to one fiercely dedicated Cherry Poppin' Daddies fan known only as "Skibz778," he maintains a YouTube channel full of concert footage I used in this video, seems to have written the entirety of their Wikipedia page, and wrote the most thoughtful dedicated review of "Zoot Suit Riot," which he did not like. I try to do more research than just reading the Wikipedia page but literally everything I found was also linked there.
@ThubanDraconis
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
For what it's worth… I support the idea of Steampunk sweeping the nation.
@jalcobo
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
I wish I was a good swing dancer.
@shoff1973
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
Lived through it, but still not convinced it wasn’t an extended Mr Show skit.
@mezmerized24
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
Its me. That someone is me
@Baseballnfj
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
Jump jive and wail was black slang for smoking weed and having sex lol
@Fiendly
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
I remember when they played this song on Nickelodeon. They censored the word "beer" from the chorus, and to my recollection, nothing else
@mccaine1
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
They also did one of the great covers of "I Want to Be Like You" from Disney's "Jungle Book". Try it out. EDIT: Sorry. I looked it up and it was Big Bad Voodoo Daddies that did that cover. I liked this entire period though.
@TheMajormayor
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
Yeah man, Electric Six… wasn't Gay Bar kind of a one hit wonder back then? I got into their music just recently, also the first four albums, and wow! Gay Bar may actually be their least interesting song…
Great work, great channel; i'm learning a lot 🙂
@emiliestinson3086
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
8:27 – Big Bad Voodoo Daddy got their name from frontman Scotty Morris who says he got it from one of his favorite musicians. The story he tells is that the guy personalized an autograph, “To Scott, the big bad voodoo daddy,” and Morris thought it sounded cool.
17:32 – I was born in 1990, and I don’t remember much of this stuff, but I actually got into it a few years ago by randomly stumbling on it. Haven’t really followed any of the bands, but I hear the hits every now and then.
@cringycoyote1958
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
If I was this dude I'd take my talents in punk swing to either hazbin hotel or lackadaisical and be back in the mainstream in no time
@bendyckman5032
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
Todd, this is ROCK MUSIC. Why the hell are you allowing yourself to become so alarmed by a band name that might be sexually suggestive? And why is pedophilia the first place your mind goes? It’s not like “Daddy” and “Baby” are unheard of in the romantic discourse of full-grown adults. Just because a bunch of joyless blue -haired neopuritans took it upon themselves to get offended by EVERYTHING in the last ten some years doesn’t mean you are required to treat it as an issue that actually matters. Stop indulging these people. They’re draining the life out of entertainment.
@akabaneolivia9550
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
I'm a little too young to remember the 90's swing revival but I absolutely know it existed because my mom fucking LOVES Stray Cat Strut. Always has.
@princesstamika
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
In the words of Dorothy Zbornak, Glen Miller isn't dead, "he's just missing." for over 80 years.
@toughfff712
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
The thing with the CPD, is they were primarily a ska band who wrote a handful of swing style songs. Then they released a full album compliled for those songs.
@FamNakano
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
I feel like I'm around the same age as Todd, and I'd like to confirm: the swing revival absolutely happened, it came and went that quickly, and I think the major signposts Todd points out in terms of how the culture got there are accurate. The only other thing I'd mention is that this coincides with a major revival of interest in WWII history and era romanticism (Saving Private Ryan, Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation" – both 1998!) that I think also contributed here.
@hopeinsd
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
I remember when Big Bad Voodoo Daddy became popular during this era. Don't remember any other bands 😅
@edwardrivera4730
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
The 90’s swing stuff just made me want to crawl out of my skin. I hate it as much as I hate Ska, for me it just feels antagonistic.
@kamrynmassey9542
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
i’m a huge oingo boingo fan and i feel like they HAVE to be partially responsible for this type of music hitting the public consciousness. the forbidden zone came out in 1980 and danny elfmans version of minnie the moocher really reminds me of this band and others like squirrel nut zippers. you also had a lot of people calling oingo boingo “ska” and “new wave” and “punk” all at the same time, idk what they actually would call themselves but theyre definitely something like that. just throwing that out there, not sure if there were any earlier examples of weird, dark punk music with horns. 💖
@danteherrera5087
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
But I do see steam punk and steampunk music. What have I done to my algorithm?!?!
@michaelboyles714
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
“Worst band name ever?”
You know “The Butthole Surfers”exist right?
@mrflipperinvader7922
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
Everybody needs to check out "Hell of a Hat" the rise of 90s ska and swing by Kenneth Partridge, really entertaining read for music history
@dface4ver
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
I’ve been hoping you would cover this. I was 18 ween all this came out and me and my friends were like, why?
@NK-xi5uu
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
The Polka Revival was entirely driven by Weird Al
@DoctorMandible
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
1:49 no… Swing was a real thing that had a comeback. Steam punk was never real
@Meatwad420
May 10, 2026 at 12:28 am
Interestingly, the drummer credited on the Zoot Suit Riot track was previously a drummer for Mr. Bungle. Hans Wagner.
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