Casey MacGill performs music that swings. Nat "King" Cole Trio meets the Mills Brothers. Fats Waller meets Fats Domino. Slim Galliard meets Fred Astaire. It is American music of many decades and no decade in particular, all happening at the same time, woven into a seamless, beautiful whole.
At the core of his sound are his band's sometimes sweet, sometimes rough-hewn three-part harmony vocals and a piano-ukulele-bass-and-drums rhythm section that swings in a variety of textures. He steers the band from his piano bench, alternately cruising along and sweating feverishly, switching intuitively between the ukulele and the piano and the cornet, singing and scatting, sometimes all within the same song.
He has been singing and arranging vocal harmonies for over 40 years, in a career that stretches from Los Angeles (Mood Indigo, feature films "Frances" and "Swing Shift") to Spokane, WA (The Spirits of Rhythm and the neo-swing classic CD "Jump") to Broadway (The musical "Swing") and finally to Seattle (most recently with the Blue 4 Trio).
What The Publications Say
New York Times
Ben Brantley, December 10, 1999
"Of the show's soloisits,... only Case MacGill, the ukulele-strumming band leader, has the kind of shrugged-off charm one associates with being cool in the swing era.
