BIG BAD VOODOO DADDY, UTAH SYMPHONY, Deer Valley Amphitheater, Saturday.
DEER VALLEY — Big Bad Voodoo Daddy set the mountains swinging Saturday night at the Deer Valley Music Festival with its high-energy, stylized, '40s-style swing music.
The best, and perhaps most appropriate, review of the concert was the tribute given by all the dancing bodies and tapping feet. It's get-up-and-move music. It's feel-good dance music. It's tap-your-feet and bounce-your-knee music.
At the least, it's enough to move the corners of your mouth into a smile.
The nine members of the band took the stage for the second half of the concert, backed by the orchestral sounds of the Utah Symphony. Their first set included the hit "You & Me & The Bottle Makes Three Tonight," and Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher."
After that, they let the orchestra relax while they did a set of New Orleans-style music from their most recent album, "Save My Soul." These songs provided some of the most fun, because they added a new and different flavor from the straight '40s swing style of the rest of the music — such as the Louis Armstrong imitation on "Simple Songs."
Although all of these pieces were composed by band leader Scotty Morris, they were true to their roots and singably, swingably, fun.
The orchestra jumped back in for the remainder of the concert, which included "I Wanna Be Like You" from Disney's animated "The Jungle Book" movie.
The guys in the band are all solid musicians, with no real virtuosos — but then, that's not the point of this music. They had great chemistry. It was one Big Bad Voodoo party on stage, with the audience invited along for the ride.
Lead singer Morris sounded increasingly hoarse throughout the concert when he was talking, but he seemed to keep up the vocals in the music just fine.
If there's any complaint about Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, it's that they don't really do any slow music. Taking a breather for a few minutes here and there might have been nice with so much back-to-back, high-energy songs.
Perhaps in the first half of the concert, before intermission, that's what the Utah Symphony was attempting — something to counterbalance all that movement and energy.
The symphony opened the concert with several pops arrangements of such jazz standards as "Autumn Leaves," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "Caravan," and a medley of other favorites.
Normally the symphony seems to do pretty well on such material, but it seemed to be an off night, or maybe it was in the amplification. For example, "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" sounded more like a blotchy patchwork of sound (with too much emphasis on the strings) than a nicely blended orchestra. The other tunes were also pretty lackluster.
While backing Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, though, the orchestra did a decent job, even swinging respectably during its few moments to shine.
E-mail: rcline@desnews.com