Dave's Big Deluxe

Formed in the autumn of 1991, Dave's Big Deluxe staged its opening performance the following spring inside a friend's carport. The Tucson ensemble quickly ranked among the city's most prominent ska acts. Local enthusiasm built steadily enough for their first independently made album, Sounds from the Credenza, to sell nearly 2,000 copies before Slimstyle acquired and reissued it in 1997. That groundwork turned the band into Arizona's foremost advocates for the ska community. Their desert seclusion encouraged an approach that ignored the established patterns of both East Coast and West Coast ska. The same approach surfaced on the next two releases: the CD5 Live at University High Prom, captured during an actual prom, and the full-length Miss Fortune that followed in 1998.