Miss Jubilee & The Humdingers
She and partner Dan Conner chose the lively stage name in 2007, when they formed the Humdingers in response to a lack of high energy St. Louis dance bands, especially ones that faithfully expressed the duo's ardor for the styles — both musical and sartorial — of jazzy blues from the 1920s through the 1950s.
Kirchhoff's high-flying vocals set the tone for her talented accompanying musicians: Conner on drums, Lawrence Welby on string bass, Bryan Foote on horns. These three regular session men are complemented by a rotating lineup of guitarists and other players about town.
The Humdingers' set list of gems from the more obscure pages of the American Songbook, which they initially rehearsed for six months before going public, quickly gathered a hard-core following of Lindy-hoppers, jitterbuggers, jive jumpers, and other toe-tappers across town. When they play at venues like the venerable Casa Loma Ballroom high-school kids spin and twirl with senior citizens, and the dance floor is always crowded with mesmerizing, syncopated action.
Miss Jubilee, a tall woman with a cheerful face made up vintage style, wears fabulous finds from the same era of the Humdingers' repertoire, even on civilian shopping trips to the grocery store as Valerie Jo Kirchhoff: turban, Peter Pan collared blouse, dungarees, and saddle shoes. When performing, her costumes sparkle in the spotlight, either with sequins or the colorful print crepe de chines of a bygone and more imaginatively designed time. Her hairdoes are always garnished by flowers in the mode of iconic torch singers like Billie Holiday. Her lipstick is red, and her eyebrows thinly arched. It's a total look, and it sets the stage for fun.
"Jubilee" is a loaded word. It comes down to us from Biblical times, back when Old Testament Hebrews took a 12 month vacation at the end of every 49 years.
Jubilees are also associated with the British Monarchy: both Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II held Silver, Gold, and Diamond Jubilees — celebrating their 25, 50, and 60 years of rule, respectively.
Cherries Jubilee, a sweet delight made of cherries flambéed in the cherry liqueur kirsch, was invented by the famous French chef Auguste Escoffier for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897.
In America, National Cherries Jubilee Day is celebrated on September 24.
"Jubilee" may or may not be etymologically related to "jubilation," whose Latin root is "jubilare," to utter a wild cry of joy.
In the first half of the 20th century, African-American religious singing groups called Jubilee Quartets sang a popular hybrid of glee and gospel. Out west, The Old Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilee was founded in 1974 by basketball star and ace coronetist Bill Borcher — it has since become the largest festival of its kind in America.
Whatever the history of this word, it works in a band name: Miss Jubilee and the Humdingers is a celebration of sound. A giddy shout out to cheery old time dance tunes.
"Jazz" and "Jubilee" now go together like hot dogs and piccalilli, zoot suits and hepcat slang, catchy beats and shaking legs.
Miss Jubilee's hometown of St. Louis, MO is an old, land-locked Midwestern city full of brick dust and rust on the banks of the Mississippi. The roots of riverboat jazz entwine its history — the legendary "St. Louis Blues" was written here, according to its composer W. C. Handy, "to combine ragtime syncopation with a real melody in the spiritual tradition."
One hot August dusk of unseasonably low humidity, down by the cobblestoned St. Louis riverfront, a woman in a calf-length, yellow floral print dress leans against the rails on the dock of the Becky Thatcher paddle-wheel showboat. Reflections from the lights along Wharf Street bloom in the slow muddy current of the Mississippi. Miss Jubilee isn't singing yet, but with those purple and yellow roses in her hair, she looks ready to belt out Johnny Green's 1933 hit "I Cover The Waterfront:"
Away from the city that hurts and knocks, I'm standing alone by the desolate docks.
This particular dock is hardly desolate, and Miss Jubilee is not alone. She's posing for fans snapping cameras and smartphones, fans who are about to follow her aboard and embark on a three hour "Blues Cruise" down the river.
Inside, the band sets up at the far end of the shiny wooden dance floor, and behatted young men in suspender-hitched baggie pants and two-toned shoes pair up with young women in Keds, tight Bermuda shorts, and colorful head kerchiefs. This cadre taps its fingers on the tables, oblivious to the view of the city now sliding by the windows outside, impatient for the music to begin. At this venue, the music is not secondary to alcohol-soaked converstion, it's the focal point.
The light in Dan Conner's drum kit begins to glow like a full moon. Miss Jubilee starts the set with a lively ukelele number. A reedy clarinet yelps along in harmony; a standup bass thrums out ensnaring figure eights of deep rhythym.
No one slouches in this band. Dan Conner's hair is affixed into a martinet peak that makes his high collared shirt seem even starchier. Upright posture does not equal stiff — but it does supply a contrast to the loose swooping, swirling, and jumping swing dancers from the local dance club known as Lindy Hop St. Louis.
According to legend, the term "Lindy Hop" was coined by Harlem dancers in the late 1920s, in response to radio announcements and headlines about Charles "Lucky Lindy" Lindbergh's record-breaking flight in his "Spirit of St. Louis" monoplane from New York to Paris. For instance, the Chicago Daily Tribune's final edition of June 17, 1927 featured this top story: "Lindy Hops For St. Louis."
The dance form, of which the jitterbug is one offshoot, wings it with "airsteps" — aerials that require a lot acrobatic agility and coordination. Think of girls somersaulting over the shoulders of their partners. In the world of swing dance, the man is known as the "base;" the woman as the "flyer." Klutzes with two left feet of either sex might seriously hurt themselves here.
Miss Jubilee and the Humdingers are the band of choice for these revivalists of an 80+ year-old dance craze, and it's exhilirating to watch such an arms-and-ankles-akimbo demonstration of good times being had by all.
Fast forward to winter. Balmy January rains have washed away most of the heavy snow from a recent "polar vortex," except a few piles scraped by plows in the parking lot across the street from the Casa Loma Ballroom in South St. Louis. Inside this old-fashioned dance hall, a large crowd has turned out, glad for a break in hibernation weather.
The mezzanine of the Casa Loma Ballroom feels haunted. Mezzanines are spooky by nature, twilit zones like 13th floors, marked M for mystery in elevators. The walls up here are painted a dark red that belongs to the 1920s — call it carmine. Three dim wall fixtures are shaped like a torch Flash Gordon paraded through conquered alien cities: four semi-circular shades of aluminum, two pleated and two smooth, whose shadows on the wall create an Art Deco arc of black and gold.
Down below on the dance floor, Christian & Jenny are warming up the crowd for Miss Jubilee and the Humdingers by teaching an hour-long swing class. Christian Frommelt and Jenny Shirar are two of the founding members of Lindy Hop St. Louis, and like many other swing dance couples across the country, go by their paired first names. As Christian & Jenny, they've taken top prizes in a number of dance competitions. They've also co-organized St. Louis's Nevermore Jazz Ball and Swing Dance Festival, and taught the New Yorkers at Dance Manhattan the steps to their specialty — the St. Louis Shag.
Jenny, a slim brunette with the bobbed hair of a flapper, wears a short, fringed sleeveless black dress with fishnet stocking and Cuban heeled dance shoes. Christian, a tall, broad-shouldered man with brillantined blonde hair framing square facial features, wears baggy trousers, buttoned down white shirt, and wide tie. They're standing at a mike in the middle of the brightly lit floor, taking the couples surrounding them through their paces: the back step, the basic, the front step, the rock step, and the turn.
"Here we go. We call this the open position," Jenny says into the microphone as she and Christian face each other, his right hand holding her left hand. "Our back step will take us a little away from each other. Forward, back, a back step, forward. Let's try this sequence out.”
Over the loud speakers , a loop of a 1946 Lionel Hampton classic starts to play. The crowd practices steps to this verse:
Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-BopThis repeat serves as a sort of jazzy metronome, not mesmerizing enough to make the dancers forget to focus on footwork improvement, but more of an actual dance experience than the flat miked words, "Back, forward, backstep, rock.”
Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop
Now you've heard this song from start to end
Now take the title once again
Baby, Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop.
During the musician’s soundcheck on stage, Miss Jubilee sits pretty on the sidelines of that dance floor in a princess-seamed cap-sleeved dress, its glazed black fabric somehow embedded with silver sparkles, her hair coiled into a one-sided 1940s era jelly-roll bob.
“Our playlists evolved directly from how much I wanted to dance to the songs,” she explains. “I'm picking out the songs I’d like to sing for my own reasons, but those reasons always take into consideration how danceable the tunes are.” That consideration is one reason for the large turnout tonight, which Miss Jubilee acknowledges by observing, “The whole swing dance community here in St. Louis has really embraced us.”
Valerie Jo sang in a choir as a girl, but as a young woman, her main love was stepping out: skanking to ska punk during the early 1990s, then switching to blues jumping during the Swing Revival of the mid 1990s.
“When we started I thought I didn't have a clue about what I was doing as a lead singer. I had never been in a band situation. I was a dancer! But actually,” she says, her speaking voice as vibrant with conviction as her singing voice, “I was smarter then than I thought I was. I was bringing more to it than I realized, just by having loved and listened to the music for so long.”
Referring to her choir background she adds, “That kind of harmony singing was never hard for me, it always came easily. It's all about blending in, sounding good with the whole. I love that kind of thing.”
Miss Jubilee has never taken voice lessons, but she does listen to advice. “Some other singers told me that when they sing, they like to breathe along to the drums, like the drums kind of set the pace for being relaxed. That works for me. And if it doesn't feel right, I probably shouldn't be doing it. That’s another piece of advice I took. So when a song somehow feels off I try changing the key, or altering it in some other way until it does feel right.”
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| What local Saint Louis chanteuse dresses like this in the '10s? Could her name be Miss Jubilee? These dresses are from 1942, the year Swing Time swang with hits like Kay Kayser's "A Zoot Suit (For My Sunday Gal)," as shown below! |