Naturröstens hemlighet, 2008 documentary)Īlice Babs' discography includes more than 800 recordings since her debut with Joddlarflickan in 1939.
Their three children are Lilleba Sjöblom Lagerbäck (born 1945), Lars-Ivar (Lasse) Sjöblom (born 1948), and Titti Sjöblom (born 1949). In 1963, her recording of "After You've Gone" (Fontana) reached No. Her voice had a range of more than three octaves Ellington said that when she was not available to sing the parts that he had written for her, he had to use three different singers. Among other works, Babs participated in performances of Ellington's second and third Sacred Concerts which he had written originally for her. The group would later tour the United States together, before dissolving in 1965.Ī long and productive period of collaboration with Duke Ellington began in 1963. The same year, she formed Swe-Danes with guitarist Ulrik Neumann and violinist Svend Asmussen. In 1958, she was the first artist to represent Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest, finishing in 4th place with the song "Lilla stjärna" ("Little Star"). A vicar called the Babs cult the "foot and mouth disease of cultural life". Despite being cast as the well-behaved, good-hearted, cheerful girl, the youth culture forming with Babs as its icon caused outrage among members of the older generation.
And by extension, a study of the early phases of the Alice Babs phenomenon may not only add to these fields of research in terms of empirical mapping, but also by orienting such studies towards specific historical-contextual webs of significance.After making her breakthrough in the film Swing it magistern ('Swing It, Teacher!', 1940), she appeared in more than a dozen Swedish-language films. As such, she may be regarded as a less conspicuous or controversial, yet perhaps for that very reason also more widely accepted, example of swing culture as the main symbolic expression of youth culture, celebrity culture and fandom during the Second World War. This turned her into a role model for numerous young women who responded to her success by they themselves performing as “Babses,” whether by participating in the numerous local talent shows for Danish “Babses” or by simply emulating her style of clothes, hairdo and dance movements. And by achieving success through her musical talent and image of “naturalness,” she bypassed the conventional heteronormative sexualization of female film and music stars. Being the first truly successful adolescent star in Denmark during this era, she personified a distinct youth culture and its acceptance by large sectors of the public. While not contesting traditional racial stereotypes head-on, her version of Nordicness incorporated elements of African-American culture as unproblematic.
ALICE BABS SWING IT MAGISTERN TEXT MOVIE
Hence, the young Alice Babs introduced in the movie Swing it, magistern came to represent, in non-rebellious and seemingly depoliticized forms, a discrete but significant readjustment in mainstream Danish approaches to several constituent elements of an imagined Danish, Nordic or European social order as independent of Nazism. In this situation, a young, talented female swing singer from unoccupied Sweden provided Danish audiences with the best possible replacement for American products while, at the same time, reformulating old feelings of Nordic identity as an alternative and subtle challenge to Nazi attempts at monopolizing Nordicness in openly racist forms. Occupied by Nazi Germany, Danish audiences demanded light entertainment as never before but were cut off from their favorite British and (particularly) American cultural products. The successful launch of her career established her as the leading youth idol not only in her native Sweden but also in neighboring Denmark. Swedish jazz singer Alice Babs, these days primarily known for her role in the virtuoso trio the Swe-Danes around 1960 as well as her later collaboration with Duke Ellington, experienced her first big breakthrough as a teenage singing star in 1940–41. Alice Babs, popular culture, Denmark, swing, 1940s Abstract