Review
Genre and Mood
Swing Republic and The Mills Brothers meet on Moanin’ for You across eighty years: electro swing built around a vocal group of the 1930s. The genre joins vintage swing and jazz to house and hip-hop, and the result here is playful, nostalgic and groovy, an old record dressed for a modern dance floor.
Song Summary
Moanin’ for You is a song by Dan Dougherty and Edmund Goulding from the film The Grand Parade; the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra recorded it for Victor in November 1929. The Mills Brothers sang it for Decca in Los Angeles on 20 February 1935, four brothers’ voices and John Mills’s guitar. Swing Republic’s version is the eighth track of their third album, Mo’ Electro Swing Republic - Let’s Misbehave, released in 2015, and it credits the brothers as featured artists.
Musical Breakdown
No source describes this track section by section, or says which recording of the brothers it uses, so this stays with what is documented.
The Voices
At the centre are the Mills Brothers, a vocal quartet from Piqua, Ohio, whose four-part harmony was first accompanied only by a ukulele and then a guitar.
The Production
Freshly Squeezed describes the album as old samples combined with electronic elements, and Juno Download, quoted by the label, called its cuts “horn-blasting, piano-slapping” exercises in modern swing.
Concepts in Focus
Electro swing depends on sampling: taking a fragment of an existing recording and building a new track around it. Here the fragment is a vocal performance, and the brothers become guests on a record made eighty years after their session.
What it borrows is vocal harmony of an unusual kind. The Mills Brothers sang in close four-part harmony, and their act began when Harry Mills, having lost his kazoo during an amateur contest, cupped his hand over his mouth and imitated a trumpet. John took the tuba, Herbert a second trumpet, Donald the trombone. In their records, some of what sounds like a band is four voices.
Artistic Context
Swing Republic is the electro-swing project of Per Ebdrup and Karina Kappel, with old jazz sounds and a positive vibe, in the label’s words. Their debut, Electro Swing Republic, came out on Freshly Squeezed in February 2011, followed by Midnight Calling in 2012, which used original songs and live musicians; Let’s Misbehave returned to the debut’s method of old samples. Compare Caravan Palace – Lone Digger, electro swing from the same year with a living singer at its centre.
Impact and Reception
The Mills Brothers made more than 2,000 recordings and sold over 50 million copies; John Mills Jr. died in January 1936, less than a year after this session. Moanin’ for You also travelled onto the 2015 compilation Loungestyle, Vol. 02. Listen for the four voices first, then for what was built around them.
