"Take a Jazz band with a Country beat..."
​ The energetic swing of jazz, country vocal harmonies, horn, strings - all wrapped up in a class-act 1940s package, fresh out of the time machine - make the sound of native french americophile Benny Lee's band the Country Syncopators.
Benny Lee and his Country Syncopators offer an authentic sounding, and looking, 1940s country-fried jazz experience perfect for dancing or listening (but doing both comes highly recommended!).
Unlike Texas swing and country music from the same time period, Benny Lee and his Country Syncopators focus on a unique style of jazz from not originating in the south or the east but in the midwest - namely St. Louis, Missouri.
The accordion, brought to Texas by german immigrants, was the sound of the polka; the fiddle was the sound of the concert hall and the square dance while the steel guitar, developed from the hawaiian guitar, was the new sound of country music; the trumpet had been blaring hot jazz licks through the radio for decades
These sounds together, however, form something at the very least different from the sum of it's parts:
"...it's Midwestern Swing for your dancing feet."
The Band:
-Lead Vocal and Rythm Guitar : Benny R.G. LEE
-Trumpet : Magnus Malmedal DRÅGEN
-Clarinet : Lars FRANK
-Fiddle : Michael Barrett DONOVAN
-Accordion : Roberto PALERMO
-Steel Guitar : Stian Jørgen SVEEN
-Lead Guitar: Jakob Folke OSSUM
-Double Bass: Miles ANDERSON