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Have a Big Bad Voodoo holiday

By Steven Horowitz

Most people don’t associate the popular swing band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy with the blues, but that’s the matrix from which the group emerged. The two musical genres do share much in common.

“All the fundamentals of swing are in the blues,” the band’s trumpet player Glen “The Kid” Marhevka says over the phone from his California home. “Just listen to early jazz when it was popular, and you’ll hear swing and blues together.”

The band in fact got its name from a bluesman. The legendary Texas blues guitarist Albert Collins autographed a poster to lead vocalist Scotty Moore and signed it “To a Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.”

“Scotty showed it to our drummer Kurt (Sondergren) and asked him, what do you think? Wouldn’t that be a great name for the band?” Marhevka says. The rest is history, and the group has reached some important milestones since then.

Big Bad Voodoo Band’s songs have been used in more than 30 movies, including 1996's "Swingers," which helped put the band and the West Coast swing music scene on the map. The group has been nominated for a Grammy Award, played the White House, performed the theme song for the popular television show “Third Rock From the Sun,” and has had gold and platinum selling albums. They even got to appear as themselves in the animated Adult Swim TV special, "Scooby Doo: Night of the Living Doo."

Two highlights stand out in particular for Marhevka: recording with Dean Martin and performing at halftime during the 1999 Superbowl with Stevie Wonder. Although Dean Martin died in 1995, his record company thought it would be a good idea to re-record his music as duets (ala Natalie Cole’s duet with her deceased father) with hip, new artists. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was one of the acts selected.

“Making the record wasn’t that hard, but it was pretty surreal. We just played along with his voice, like he was there in the room.” Marhevka says. “We are fans of that whole Rat Pack era and style.”

Marhevka described playing at the Superbowl XXXIII as another surreal experience, but in a much different way. The intensity of the huge live and televised audience, the fact that the band got to play with a legend like Stevie Wonder, and the whole grandiosity of the event made it special.

“I never imagined I would do anything like that in my life. In some ways I can’t imagine any thing better than that,” Marhevka says. “There was an awesomeness about it being a one-of-a-kind experience.”

But he doesn’t consider that the best part of his musical life. “The fact that we are still playing music together, the band’s longevity, the whole ride — the fact that we are still friends having a good time making a career out of having fun together, that’s the real highlight,” he says.

On Thursday, Dec. 10, the band will visit Iowa City’s Englert Theatre to rework yuletide classics like “Blue Christmas,” “Jingle Bells” and “We Three Kings” into rollicking big band extravaganzas as well as perform new songs of their own.

Tickets, $34 to $41, are available at the Englert box office, 221 E. Washington St., online or by calling (319) 688-2653.