On tour, the band plays an eclectic range of music--everything from their updated version of big band swing, to ska to country. But long ago, the group noticed a trend.

"We would go out on tours, and we had the three albums," said Sean Flannery, tenor saxophone player for the band. "At the shows people would come up to Howard (Libes), our manager, who was selling merchandise for us at the time, and ask him which albums have the most swing stuff on them. He would have to point out a couple that had five or six of the tunes. So eventually we were like why don't we make kind of a compilation?"

The Daddies took 10 swing tunes from their previous CDs, added four new tracks and released the collection, "Zoot Suit Riot: The Swingin' Hits of the Cherry Poppin' Daddies," on their own label, Space Age Bachelor Pad Records.

Sales of the CD took off, and within two months, the band had an offer from Mojo Records to re-release the CD with better distribution and promotion. The next thing the Daddies knew, the song "Zoot Suit Riot," one of the new tunes on the CD, had been put into rotation on MTV, and the group had a hit single and a gold album on its hands.

With the song, the Cherry Poppin' Daddies brought swing music to the mainstream rock audience and helped boost the careers of other similar bands like the Royal Crown Revue and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.

The band's repertoire extends far beyond swing, so the Daddies have reason to wonder how their newfound fans will react to other styles.

"Now, this band is defined by 'Zoot Suit Riot,' at the moment," Flannery agreed. "Yeah, in some ways that could be bad. It's kind of hard to argue with this kind of success, though."

At this point, Flannery said, the group plans to ignore commercial considerations and complete a new studio CD with its broad range of music intact.

"We don't come from just the swing, the retro '40s jump (sound)," Flannery said. "We want to have a prolonged career. We already have one. It's going on 10 years now. So by not pigeonholing ourselves and continuing to write in different styles and challenge ourselves, it's only going to help us because really, the public's appetite, people get bored."

Clearly, the eight members of the band--Steve Perry (songwriter/singer/guitarist), Jason Moss (guitar), Daniel Schmid (bass), Tim Donahue (drums), Dana Heitman (trumpet), Ian Early (baritone and alto saxes) Dustin Lanker (keyboards) and Flannery--are aware that today's swing revival could be just a short-lived fad. But Flannery thinks today's bands have some control over whether the music achieves long-term popularity.

"There are some really good swing bands out," he said. "And as long as these bands do something different with it, mix it with something new, make sure that it's not just rehashed and that's it--there's merit in every music--but it's just not going to last long if it's something that's been heard a thousand times."

With the "Zoot Suit Riot" CD and the group's three previous releases, the Cherry Poppin' Daddies have already shown a fresh perspective on the swing music popularized in the 1940s by artists such as Count Basie, Louis Prima and Duke Ellington.

The Daddies bring a distinctly rocking attitude to the music, with aggressive drumming, some hard-edged guitar and blaring horns. Lyrically, Perry shows he's not writing your father's--or grandfather's--type of swing. He's drawn to colorful--and frequently dark--characters and story lines.

For instance, the song "The Ding-Dong Daddy of the D-Car Line" is based on a 1950s newspaper article about a polygamous train conductor who eventually married 16 women. A darker tale emerges on "Drunk Daddy" where Perry takes on the role of an alcoholic's son who rebels against abuse of himself and his sister.

Perry and bassist Schmid assembled the original Cherry Poppin' Daddies in Eugene, Oregon in 1989. In the case of Perry, he had discovered swing during college at the University of Oregon and was immediately drawn to the music. The band, though, didn't immediately enjoy unanimous support in Eugene, partly because of the group's ambiguously risque name.

Eventually, though, the Daddies developed a strong following and began to branch out beyond the Northwest, touring with groups such as the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Squirrel Nut Zippers.

What's interesting about the current swing scene is that Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and the Royal Crown Revue also formed around the same time as the Cherry Poppin' Daddies.

"I wonder if it wasn't just boredom, just boredom with what was going on in the scene," Flannery said, noting that the Daddies' formed just as grunge rock was breaking out of the Northwest.

"Music kind of took a downward spiral...just kind of got really stagnant. So I think that guys who were...into music just wanted to do something that no one else was, just kind of lash out or just express themselves."