Swing Jive The 1930s:
The first wave of jive to crest across popular youth culture was the vocabulary of swing music itself. The language used by the jazz musicians to describe their craft was quickly adopted by young swing fans, known as cats or alligators (probably derived from gate, the traditional term of address exchanged by jazz musicians). A tin ear did not like music.
Instruments were rarely called by their standard names. A clarinet was a gob stick, a string bass was a doghouse, a tram was a trombone, an iron horn a cornet, a guinea's harp, gitbox, or gitter was a guitar, a groanbox was an accordion, a wood pile was a xylophone, drums were skins, a saxophone was a gobble-pipe.
There were two basic schools of jazz, sweet (conventional) or hot (swing). On the sweet side of the spectrum were corn (old-fashioned jazz), the long underwear gang (a sweet band), salon (restrained jazz), lollypop (cloying, sweet jazz) and schmaltz (overly sentimental music). On the hot side of the scales was clam-bake (wild swing), dillinger (very hot swing), gut-bucket (lowdown blues), barrel-house (free and easy jamming, or improvising), and in the center collegiate (extremely slow swing).
Musicians (all of whom except the band leader were sidemen) were known in large part by their instruments, such as skin-tickler for drummer, squeaker for violinist, whanger for guitarist, or lip-splitter for any wood instrumentalist. A female singer was a canary; a paperman was a musician who could only perform using written music, and to fake was to play by ear.
The techniques of swing were all described in slang terms known to most fans. The basics of music were covered by slang--spots were notes, lay-outs were rests, frisking the whiskers or licking the chops was warming up, to jam was to play without any arrangement, to woodshed was to work out and practice a new song in private, to improvise was to kick out, and a musical embellishment in an improvisation was a break, get-off, lick, riff, or take-off. To play with vigor and inspiration was to be in the groove, break it down, get hot, give it a ride, go to town, send, swing out. A hot passage or performance was a solid sender that would chill ya. Play louder? Wang it! Pick up the beat? Quit mugging light and mug heavy! After a gang (a medley of songs), the song worked into its sock chorus (final chorus of an arrangement), perhaps ending by easing it in (a soft finish).

Well, all I know is that I really liked this music whenever I heard it in movies from that era. I haven't a clue as to the names of the artists that performed the music though, so that I could get some recordings. Anybody have any ideas?

Check out this site, Madel. Seem sto be a lot of information and many links there. SWING!