A Band, A Bond -- The Senior Swingers Act As Music Therapists, Sharing Song And Dance And A Little Bit Of Ham

Some of them can't remember what they had for lunch, but they remember the words to the old tunes as though it was yesterday.

"You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You . . ."

Some of them can't get across the dance floor anymore, but they can wiggle a one-two beat in their wheelchairs, snap their fingers, tap their toes.

"Keep Your Sunny Side Up, Up . . ."

The Senior Swingers have brought a bit of vaudeville to the old folks' home this afternoon, and the residents, many of them living in the gauzy world of Alzheimer's, are loving it.

For a couple of hours it all comes back.

All the words to "Bow Down to Washington," led by a trio of graying pompom girls dressed to cheer in University of Washington purple and gold.

The entire chorus to "Rockabye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody," sung by a torch singer in a silky gown.

The "yeee-haw" that slips out at the end of "I'm an Ol' Cowhand, On the Rio Grande."

The Senior Swingers, a volunteer group from the South County Senior Center in Edmonds, call themselves music therapists. They make house calls to senior centers, nursing and retirement homes, and sometimes churches and schools - anywhere there's a need for an old song, a little bit of ham and some fancy dancing.

The state of Washington called them last year's outstanding community-service volunteer group. The award usually goes to a corporate giant, like Boeing or Weyerhaeuser. The traveling plaque that goes along with the honor sits in a special glass case at the senior center until a 1994 group is chosen.

The Senior Swingers started in 1968 as a kitchen band, making "music" with tambourines, castanets, a banjo and a washboard. "I hate to say it, but they called that a gut-bucket," says their director and producer, Audre Yancey, wrinkling her nose with great drama. "We've gone past that now."

Oh, yes. Now there's a full orchestra - piano, drums, bass, clarinets, violin, guitar - a dancer, men's and women's singing groups, a torch singer.

Yancey came to the Senior Swingers in 1973. Her husband had died, she was bitterly lonely and a friend suggested she see what the senior center had to offer. She was "much too young for it back then," Yancey says, but when she told the seniors she'd been a drama major at the University of Washington, they found her a noisemaker and a chair.

Yancey has been performing since she was 4 - the Red Cross asked her to be in a hometown production in Walla Walla with "a big star from New York City with a big diamond in her front tooth. I don't remember her name."

As the show-biz force behind the troupe, Yancey sees to it that the love songs contain the appropriate amount of romance, the torch singer has slink in both voice and gown, and the van gets them all there on time.

Most of the songs are at least 50 years old, says Harlan Durand, pianist and Yancey's associate producer. "If they're later than 1940 or 1950 they're too new for them to remember."

Yancey calls the group's 21 musicians, singers and dancers "the kids" and forbids them to talk about their ages. She says they range from 66 to 90.

"I'll give you a little hint," says Kate Collins, the guitar player, Yancey's associate director and something of a cut-up. "Some of us are so old, we're afraid to buy green bananas."

The troupe has performed "as far north as Carnation, as far east as Monroe, as far south as Medford, Ore., and as far west as, let's see, Hawaii," Yancey says. "Some of us went to Forks for a little vacation once and had a show all arranged with the motel manager before one of us remembered we were on vacation. So we didn't do it."

But the Senior Swingers did perform 81 shows last year. It was too much for some of them, Yancey says, so they're limiting themselves this year to one rehearsal and two shows a week.

"The kids are so devoted," she says. "Our drummer hasn't been feeling at all well lately, but he shows up even if it's practically out of a sickbed."

Durand remembers the day the van broke down. The group was scheduled to play at a rehabilitation center on Capitol Hill. It was too late to change plans, so he and a violinist drove to Seattle. They were the only ones who showed up. "You know, we got one of the best responses we've ever had that day, though. We played whatever we thought they'd like, and they pulled their wheelchairs right up to us."

The Senior Swingers are performing at the Kline Galland Home, a Jewish retirement and nursing home in Seward Park, and Bernie Press shows up in his dark suit and yarmulke.

Press is the only real professional in the troupe. Press played bass with Henry Busse, a trumpeter with Paul Whiteman's Orchestra who formed his own big band before coming to Seattle to play with the 1962 World's Fair Band.

Press wanted to sing back then, too, but band leaders "didn't think I had a good enough voice."

Press is 83 now. His step is mostly a shuffle and the other men have to help him hoist his bass around the stage. He's getting to sing on stage for the first time with Yancey in the "Bicycle Built for Two" number.

His voice is pretty clear and he and Yancey flirt outrageously with one another as they sing.

The ladies in the audience think Press should have been allowed to sing all along.

"That was very nice," one says. "I remember that song. I remember all these songs. We used to sing them all the time, you know."