Thirty-Five Years, One Horn Section
From a Eugene punk band to double platinum, and back to the stage in period costume
The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies formed in Eugene, Oregon in 1989, a punk band that couldn’t help mixing in jazz, funk and ska. Nobody, least of all the band, expected 1997’s Zoot Suit Riot to turn them into the sound of a swing revival — but the record went double platinum, the title track climbed the Billboard chart, and the Daddies found themselves on The Tonight Show, Letterman, Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, and nominated for an MTV Video Music Award.
In the years since, the band has built a second act almost nobody saw coming: a run of meticulously staged, era-specific theatrical shows. A “Jazz Age Lawn Party” covers Roaring ’20s and Cotton Club material; a “Live at the Sands”-style production salutes the Rat Pack; and the show coming to West Bend is their World War II “Christmas Canteen” — part Tiki bar, part Benny Goodman, staged like a radio broadcast beamed out to soldiers in the Pacific in 1942.
Frontman Steve Perry has described the mission behind all of it as tracing a direct line from the pre-rock American songbook — Tin Pan Alley, hot jazz — to the band’s own modern original material, using the standards audiences already love to open the door to the songs they don’t expect. It’s the same eight-piece horn section either way: the one that went double platinum is the one taking the stage in West Bend.