Arrived at Hot Jam: 2005
When he’s not dancing: Technical editor for an engineering firm
Favorite song: Come find out in his DJ set on November 25!
Photo by Conway Li
“My aim is to get all of you the best possible set that I can come up with on that particular night,” says DJ and dancer Jim Wheatley. “Sometimes I have a theme; sometimes not. But the aim is to always just do the very best job I can. I never take it for granted.”
For twenty years, Jim has been a celebrated DJ in the Atlanta Swing dance scene. He got his start towards the end of the Neo-Swing era, and DJ’d his first ever Swing set in November of 1999 at Swingers club in Buckhead.
“I would bring three or four CDs with songs and give it to [the DJ] and say, ‘Hey, try this song right here and that song right there.’ And every song I brought him filled the floor.
“He was impressed, and he said, ‘Hey, man, I'm about to go back to Jersey. You ought to try this.’ And I thought back, oh, I used to work at a radio station. Bet I could do it again.
“So I talked to the manager of the place, and sure enough they brought me in on Friday nights and Saturday nights.
“It only lasted a few months because it wore you out. I mean, I was working a forty-hour week, then go in to DJ starting around 10 pm and go to 3 or 4 am. At last my body finally said, I can't take this anymore.
“But I will have to say that I had a lot of fun doing it. So even though I had to quit Swingers, I knew that I wanted to start doing it more in the future.”
Soon after he stopped DJing at Swingers, the Neo-Swing era faded out. But a handful of dancers, inspired by the Neo-Swing bands, started listening to older classics, and Jim took note.
“I needed some new musical inspiration in my life at that time, and here it was, from out of the past,” he says.
“What I like about some of this music is it has its own personal atmosphere. And you know, I can be just listening to it at work or wherever I am in the car. Something like Shiny Stockings by Count Basie comes on. And I can't explain it.
“Here's my philosophic side. There’s an existential happiness to it.
“There was a moment [in the Ken Burns Jazz series] where some jazz artists came over to post-World War I France, Paris, and were playing over there. And there's this philosopher who said, ‘You know, at last, I have a reason to live again.’
“Well, that's going a little overboard. But to me, it's like, you know, this music in and of itself is inspiring. I want to dance to it. And I liked the people that were around, and it’s good exercise.”
The music was a powerful draw, and it wasn’t long before Jim was DJing Swing sets again. His second gig was at a club called Atlanta Swing Era Dance Associates, or ASEDA. In 2001, he started a monthly Friday night slow dance called the D Town Special at what is now CORE Studios in Decatur.
Then, in 2003, Jim traveled to DC Lindy Exchange.
“I walked in there and the place is just absolutely wall-to-wall people, hundreds and hundreds of people, and they can dance. And there's a big orchestra playing on the bandstand and I looked around and said, I like this.
“I walked back to a table where other events put their flyers down. It's just practically every other major city in the US, and several from Europe. And nothing from Atlanta is anywhere to be found.
“And I just thought, we could do one of these.”
When he returned home, he teamed up with fellow dancer Patrick Manigault to cofound Atlanta Lindy Exchange. That first ATLX, in March of 2004, was his proudest moment, his favorite contribution to the Atlanta dance scene.
“The event just went marvelous. I could not have asked for better. We had 150 visitors, including two people from California.”
Not only did ATLX become an annual event for several years, but it also boosted Jim’s DJing to national recognition.
“One of the best times in my life was, I guess, because of my involvement with ATLX. I got a little bit of a national reputation for a short time. I got invited to DJ [at events around the country]. I enquired at some of them and said, ‘I'm coming to your event; I'd love to DJ,’ and they said, ‘By all means, come on.’”
He’s traveled to DJ at exchanges in South Florida, Chicago, San Diego, Orlando, and more.
“One of my biggest honors is I was able to DJ at Lindy Groove in Pasadena. It’s one of the biggest weekly dance events in the country.
“It was a lot of fun.”
Not every DJ gig is a rousing success, though. Jim still vividly remembers his biggest failure.
“Back when I was still pretty new to Swing DJing, [Summer Swing Jam] asked me to DJ a contest.
“I now admit, I picked some of the worst songs you could possibly do. And quite frankly, a lot of people were mad at me for picking terrible stuff.
“And I realized, you know, DJs have their strong suits and their weak points. Picking music for a contest is my weak point.
“So the next time I was asked to DJ a contest for a particular dance style, I went online and I stole from other DJs. Some of them had posted their playlists. I just took down what worked for them, and that was my set.
“And then everybody afterwards said, ‘Jim, hey, that was a lot better than that thing you did last year.’
“I may have a reputation as a pretty good DJ, but I have screwed things up before.”
Photo by Cate Rauschenberger
What does it take to DJ an amazing set? Jim has spent twenty years discovering the essentials of excellent DJing, and like a magician, he won’t reveal all his secrets. But he does have some core principles.
“The first is, obviously, know your music. Know the great old stuff; know the good new stuff that's coming out. That’s rule one.
“Number two is never stay in one place too long. That goes for tempo; that goes for instrumentation. Play something that's old from the 1930s or 40s; you might want to move to a more modern piece after that.
“Jesse Miner is a very well-known DJ out in San Francisco. He was one of the people I paid attention to when I was getting started.
“And he says, find your linchpin songs. It's a song that kind of works in two directions. If you've been doing this during a set and you want to change the tempo or the mood, play this guy or this song, and go in a slightly different direction.
“One of my little trademarks is I always drop one soul song in the middle of my set, usually between 10:15 and 10:30. You'll hear something from Marvin Gaye, or Aretha Franklin, or the Temptations — just something along those lines. And everybody's come to accept it because I always try to pick a song that swing dancers can also work with.”
While most DJs play mp3s on a computer, Jim is known for his vinyl experiences. He DJ’d his first vinyl set in December of 2009, and a couple years later, his vinyl nights became a Georgia Tech tradition.
“I had been gradually collecting enough vinyl of the great swing band leaders that I decided I could do a pretty decent swing set using vinyl records.
“So I went to the Georgia Tech Dance Association leader at that time, and I just kind of presented, ‘You guys like to just go with a DJ in the summertime to save money. How about for the July dance, I'll bring a turntable, we'll put them up into your sound system, we'll see how it goes.’
“And they liked it so much that they asked me back every July after that.”
A vinyl night with Jim is a special experience. “The one thing about DJing with vinyl records is it's a lot of fun, but it's also work,” he says. “DJ stands for disc jockey. You are literally jockeying discs back and forth.
“You know, I have an idea of what I want to play next, but I might switch and play something different. On the laptop, you can just locate that mp3 and add it to your program. With vinyl records, you have to flip really fast.
“Thankfully, I keep stuff in alphabetical order. Find it, put it on the turntable and queue it up. You know, get the stylus right where the song starts. That one fades out, you turn that volume down, put the other one up, restart it and there you go.”
Whether he’s curating a vinyl experience or DJing with mp3s on his computer, Jim brings thoughtfulness and creativity to every set. What are the most popular songs he’s ever played? He won’t say. But one thing’s for sure: he’ll play them again.
“I've had several laptops I DJ from and I added up all the songs with the greatest number of plays. So I've been able to add up the songs that were the most popular, and there's one song that stands out as the most popular.
“And you will have to come to hear it on November 25. I'm going to DJ the entire night. And I am going to play all of the songs that I've been able to ascertain were the most popular of all time.”
With his dancing, DJing, and visionary event organization, Jim has left a lasting mark on the Atlanta dance scene. But at the core, this is truly a labor of love.
“I like seeing people happy and having the time of their lives on the dance floor.”