"Swing," "Swinger. What exactly does this word mean? It is so funny how we can interpret things differently even if it’s the same word. My dictionary defines "Swinger" as: "One that swings: a good swinger of baseball bats." My dictionary also says: "A member of a couple, especially a married couple, who exchanges sexual partners." Now we're getting somewhere, although I didn't know marital status had so much to do with "swinging." This is pretty nonspecific. What Webster doesn’t know is that people that are not married swing as well. .
Back in the 1920’s a new style of jazz was formed called “swing jazz.” This how far the word Swing dated back. The orientation explains the structure of dance where a man would literally "swing" his partner through a series of dance moves. Most conservatives couldn't believe it when they saw people shaking their hips and frolicking to this new underground sensual music.
Eventually, in the 30's and 40's, band leaders like Cab Callaway, Duke Ellington, Glen Miller and Count Basie brought in the big band era and "Swing was King." In the 1950’s when Frank Sinatra and the Rat pack redefined the word swingers, it saved it from its faded glory because of World War II. The word's nuance super ceded their music and began to symbolize their lifestyle. They were stylish, chic, fashionable and had a lot of sex appeal. They were swingers, man. Playboy magazine was first published and a new era of sexuality was born. "Swinger" had a positive connotation, everyone wanted to be called a "swinger." At the time the word was affiliated with men only. It would have by no means been considered suitable for a woman.
Of course the "shagedelic swinging sixties" followed and once again the term "swinger" took on a new, cartoon-type of character. Towards the end of the 60's, swinger club started to form. Periodicals were written and various forms of alternative relationships like swinging, polyamory and shared living began to show up.
In the early 1970’s key parties and wife swappers is what swingers were called. Like I mentioned earlier, chauvinist overtones dominated the "swinger" scene, the very term "wife swapper" implies that the man owns his wife and can trade her at will for another partner.
Unfortunately this loose lifestyle brought about a deathly swing, AIDS. The forces the swingers to keep it behind closed doors or cancel their “membership” to the clubs. This plummet happened in the 1980s. Eventually, swinging became a lot more open, clubs rebounded and national conventions like Lifestyles in California and Las Vegas gained in popularity and thousands of couples came to meet other open minded couples. "Leisurely swinging" became a influential financial factor, in fact it became its own commerce. Today, you can find articles on "swinging" in Time magazine, the New York Times, Details, on HBO, MTV, Showtime, VH1 and most national and local newscasts, newspapers and magazines. You would be surprised how many clubs and convention you will find popping up over the states. Recently, in New Orleans, over 1,000 "swingers" paraded down Bourbon St. in the first ever "swinging parade" behind a jazz (swing) band with a police escort. It has pretty much become conventional.
