Is it possible to swing some pairs of quavers more than others? I realise this is going to be difficult to explain on a forum!

Thanks!

Yes, it's possible. But if you're going to do that and make it sound good it should be for a specific purpose - sometimes straightening out the quavers can give a more laid back feel - a kind of slowing down effect. If you're playing a big-band chart you need to swing the way the rest of the band are and as directed - if you're soloing you can do what you want....and remember the degree of swing is not primarily about the relative lengths of the quavers.

Yes indeed, as TSax says. For my OU dissertation I did rather a lot of anoraky research on this, and it was fascinating the amount of playing around with 'swing ratio' that the Count Basie Orchestra used. If you have far too much time on your hands and are interested, you can read the disseration here:
http://www.exetermusic.talktalk.net/OU%20B...issertation.pdf
If you do trawl through it, apologies about the academic language, but that's what the OU wanted!