It Don’t Mean A Thing, 1932, featuring Ivie Anderson with Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra

A1932 Burlington pocket watch time machine casts us back to the inception of the jazz standard “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)“, a 1931 composition by Duke Ellington with lyrics by Irving Mills, arranged by Ellington in August 1931 during intermissions at Chicago’s Lincoln Tavern. Here, we hear the original recording by Ellington and his orchestra for Brunswick Records (Br 6265) on recorded February 2, 1932. Ivie Anderson sang the vocal and trombonist Joe Nanton and alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges played the instrumental solos. The title was based on the oft stated credo of Ellington’s former trumpeter Bubber Miley, who was dying of tuberculosis. The song became famous, Ellington wrote, “as the expression of a sentiment which prevailed among jazz musicians at the time.“ Probably the first song to use the phrase “swing“ in the title, it introduced the term into everyday language and presaged the Swing Era by three years. Ivie An