Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers

The act had 11 entries in the UK singles chart between July 1989 and November 1991. Each track used a sampled instrumental theme to join the old songs together, in much the same way as dance music megamixes. "Swing the Mood" began with Glenn Miller's "In the Mood" (a recording from 1939), followed immediately by rhythmic re-editing of Bill Haley and His Comets' "Rock Around the Clock", Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" and the Everly Brothers' "Wake Up, Little Susie". "Swing the Mood" was No. 1 for five weeks on the UK Singles Chart in 1989, and quickly caught on in the United States, where it reached No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

"That's What I Like" featured the theme music from the television police drama Hawaii Five-O, with overlaid excerpts from rock hits like Chubby Checker's "The Twist" and Ernie Maresca's "Shout! Shout! (Knock Yourself Out)". "Let's Party" (released originally in the U.S. as "March of the Mods") used "March of the Mods" (also known as the Finnjenka Dance), interpolating Del Shannon's "Runaway" and The Wrens' "Come Back My Love" among others. In the UK "Let's Party" was a Christmas hit with samples of Wizzard's "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday", Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody" and Gary Glitter's "Another Rock 'N' Roll Christmas". Recently this has been remixed to remove the Gary Glitter track to avoid controversy over his subsequent criminal convictions and, somewhat anachronistically, replace it with Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You", should any radio stations wish to play it over the Christmas period. They did not have permission to use the original Wizzard recording so Roy Wood re-recorded the part of the track for them.

The original European medleys featured the original recordings by the original artists. Legalities prevented certain of the original recordings to be reused in America, so the American Jive Bunny releases substituted later re-recordings of the same tunes by Bill Haley, Del Shannon and others. Later reissues further replaced some of these artists, such as Bill Haley and Elvis, with impersonator-singers.

The original idea for the project came from Les Hemstock on the DJ-only Mastermix DJ service.[1] The original "Swing The Mood" mix appeared on Issue 22 of Mastermix's monthly album release. John Pickles (father of Andy Pickles) was never in the band, but was the owner of the label and effectively the manager.

Les Hemstock later became a trance DJ working with Paul Van Dyk. Andy Pickles, went on to found the hard house record label, Tidy Trax, with fellow DJ Amadeus Mozart. Ian Morgan became a successful club DJ and Mark Smith later worked in the music industry as a label manager and producer.

The Mastermix DJ Music Service is now in its 31st year and still supplies mixes and DJ compilations on CD and digital download.

• Official Jive Bunny website
• Official Mastermix CD website
• Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers discography at Discogs