Hi, Stim. You said, "play all the eighth notes as if each pair was a dotted eighth and a sixteenth note (meaning that each pair is a triplet)."

Yep, I agree. When I was fooling around with MIDI, I made a set of notes in the triplet pattern described above, and I made another set that was a dotted eighth followed by a sixteenth. When I played them simultaneously, I couldn't hear a difference. I even slowed the tempo down to 40, and they remained the same.

I've been playing the Dill Pickle Rag on the piano, and I finally realized that the odd-numbered eighth notes are almost a whole note. That helped me make it swing, although at my present tempo the swing is more like a lurch.