As a leading cultural indicator, it doesn’t rank up there with the national drop in crime. But it’s close.

For the last few years, America has experienced a revival in swing dancing. Big bands and young neo-swing “jump and jive” groups like the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies — who are currently receiving airplay on rock radio and selling ten thousand copies a week of their Zoot Suit Riot album — are once again playing the music of Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Louis Jordan, and Cab Calloway in clubs and ballrooms jammed to the walls with jitterbuggers, most of them in their teens, twenties, and thirties. Indeed, the phenomenon has gotten so big that the Gap clothing store is running an ad featuring jitterbuggers lindy-hopping to Louis Prima’s 1956 “Jump, Jive, and Wail.”