The Darktown Strutters' Ball
(The) Darktown Strutters' Ball is a pop song written by Shelton Brooks and published in 1917. It is one of the first jazz tracks to be recorded on vinyl .
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The syncopated, ragtime- influenced song The Darktown Strutters' Ball , written by the African-American songwriter Shelton Brooks (1886-1975), was inspired by a social gathering held at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in December 1915. It addresses the perception of different skin colors among African Americans and their (white) surroundings. Lyrically, the Darktown theme refers to the then popular hits Darktown Barbeque, Darktown Belle's March, Darktown Colored Band, A Darktown Courtship, Darktown Is Out Tonight and Darktown Poets .
The song chorus begins with four bars of a simple boogie melody (I'll be down to get you in a taxi, honey / You better be ready about half past eight) .
The song was first performed in vaudeville in 1917 by a white vocal trio of Benny Fields, Jack Salisbury and Benny Davis before becoming popular with dance orchestras. Music publisher Leo Feist acquired the copyrights from Will Rossiter and then sold three million copies of sheet music. An arrangement of the Darktown Strutter 'Ball was released 14 days before the song was first recorded .
First recordings and later cover versions
Musicians who covered the song in 1917 included a saxophone sextet called Six Brown Brothers , the Ford Dabney Orchestra, and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band , which recorded Strutters Ball on May 30, 1917 ( Columbia Records A-2297). The following year Billy Murray & the Premier Quartet (Edison Blue Amberol Record), Arthur Collins & Byron G. Harlan (Columbia A2478), the Jaudas' Society Orchestra (Edison 50469), the English Savoy Quartet (HMV) and in France took him the 158th Infantery Band of the US Army. Early recordings of the song were also made by Wilbur Sweatman , the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawks Orchestra (1929), Ted Lewis , Paul Whiteman , Miff Mole and his Molers, and Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians.
From the early 1930s the song became a popular pop and jazz standard , interpreted a. a. by Red McKenzie (1931), Fats Waller , Meade Lux Lewis , Luis Russell , Chick Webb (1934), also by Jimmy Dorsey (1938, vocals June Richmond ), Django Reinhardt & André Ekyan (1939), Coleman Hawkins & Jack Hylton ( London, 1939), Oscar Alemán , Tiny Hill , Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith , Phil Napoleon , Luckey Roberts , Sid Phillips , Ella Fitzgerald , Lu Watters , Willie The Lion Smith, and Benny Goodman .
The Darktown Strutters' Ball was also covered by western swing musicians such as Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys (1936), The Skillet Lickers, Milton Brown (1935, Decca 5179) and the Hoosier Hot Shots (1936) from the 1950s by numerous European and American Dixieland musicians and bands such as Kid Thomas Valentine , The Dukes of Dixieland , Carlo Loffredo's 2nd New Orleans Jazz Band (RCA, 1959), Al Hirt , Marty Grosz and the Dutch Swing College Band . More recently, the song has also been interpreted by Sammy Rimington , Wycliffe Gordon ( Dreams of New Orleans ) and Catherine Russell ( Bring It Back , 2015). The discographer Tom Lord lists a total of over 75 (as of 2015) cover versions in the field of jazz .
Well-known pop and R&B musicians such as Hoagy Carmichael , Les Paul & Mary Ford , The Charioteers , Fats Domino , Alberta Hunter and Dean Martin covered the song. The Italian-American singer Lou Monte recorded a version in the Napolital dialect with Hugo Winterhalter's orchestra in 1954 ( RCA Victor 47-5611), similar to what Louis Prima (Equity 1001) had done with an Italian-Yiddish version. The song was also used in several films, such as Coney Island (1943, directed by Walter Lang ). Nicole Maurey sang him in a duet with Bing Crosby in a French-English version in From Little Boy Lost (1953), in Boardwalk Empire he was played by Vince Giordano and The Nighthawks.
Notes and individual references
- ↑ Michael Lasser: America's Songs II: Songs from the 1890s to the Post-War Years . 2014, p. 63
- ↑ Freddy Schauwecker: Let's go to the very best of jazz: The stories of the best tracks in Old Time Jazz . 2015, p. 90.
- ↑ David Dutkanicz: A First Book of Jazz: 21 Arrangements for the Beginning . 2011, page 20
- ^ Katherine Spring: Saying It With Songs: Popular Music and the Coming of Sound to Hollywood Cinema , 2003, p. 139
- ↑ David J. Steffen. From Edison to Marconi: The First Thirty Years of Recorded Music . 2005, p. 133.
- ↑ a b c David A Jasen, Gene Jones: Spreadin 'Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters, 1880-1930 . 2013, p. 148
- ↑ a b c Tom Lord: Jazz discography (online)
- ^ Columbia 1084-D
- ^ Columbia CB-754
- ↑ Shown on US television in The Les Paul & Mary Ford at Home Show , circa 1953
- ↑ To be seen in a soundie from 1941. See Larry Richards African American Films Through 1959: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Filmography , 2005, p. 45
- ^ Newsweek - Volume 43 1954, p. 98
- ^ Stanley Green, Hollywood Musicals Year by Year . 1999, p. 120