Darktown Strutters' Ball

History

Recorded versions

• American Republic Band
• Ray Anthony in Australia on Capitol CP-139, flip side "Deep Night" and in the US as the flip side to the single "Count Every Star".
• Allen Broome & His Dixieland All-Stars released a version on his debut solo album BucketMouth in June, 2013.
• Boswell Sisters recorded a version on May 23, 1934, in New York but was only issued in Australia on Columbia DO-1255.
• Pete Fountain in 1960 on Mr. New Orleans Meets Mr. Honky Tonk Coral CRL 57334 with Big Tiny Little, in 1962 on Dixieland RCA Camden CAL 727, and in 1963 on South Rampart Street Parade Coral CRL 57440
• Joe Brown on Decca F 11207, 1960, flip side "Swagger"; this was Brown's first single to chart.
• The Brown Dots.
• Phil Brito
• Castle Jazz Band
• Larry Clinton and Orchestra
• Arthur Collins & Byron G. Harlan
• Bing Crosby included the song in a medley on his album On the Happy Side.
• Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra with June Richmond;
• Arthur Fields
• James Gelfand made a version for the Canadian movie Jack Paradise .
• Connie Haines, Alan Dale, the Ray Bloch Seven, and Sy Oliver's Orchestra
• Hoosier Hotshots
• Pee Wee Hunt
• Alberta Hunter recorded the song on her 1978 comeback album Amtrak Blues.
• Brown & Terry Jazzola Boys
• Lou Monte recorded "Darktown Strutter's Ball " in 1954. The RCA release was a major hit, reaching No. 12 on retail sales. He parodies the lyrics, including "I'll be down to get you in a pushcart honey", and asks "Are you from Lyndhurst?", the city of his birth.
• Russ Morgan and his Orchestra
• Ruby Newman and his Orchestra
• Original Dixieland Jazz Band. The ODJB recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2006.
• Orlando's Orchestra
• Preacher Rollo and the Five Saints
• The Six Brown Brothers, a comedic musical ensemble, recorded the song in 1917.
• Gid Tanner's Skillet Lickers
• Toots' Quartet
• Fats Waller
• Chick Webb recorded a version on January 15, 1934, in New York but was only issued in England on Columbia CB-754.
• The Ted Mulry Gang released a rock 'n' roll version of the song catalog number Albert AP11004, produced by Ted Albert in Australia, in February 1976, reaching no. 3 on the Kent Music Report.
• The Beatles performed "Darktown Strutters' Ball" in their early Liverpool and Hamburg performances, though no recording has ever surfaced.
• Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys 1940s.

  In popular culture

• The Darktown Strutters' Ball was the squadron tune of the RFC's elite No. 56 Squadron during the later stages of the First World War.
• Tom and Jerry 1950 animated cartoon Saturday Evening Puss - Background music as Mammy Two Shoes gets ready for an evening out.
• Bing Crosby and Nicole Maurey sang the song in the 1953 film Little Boy Lost.
• In a 1975 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show as the answer to a "knock-knock" joke: Knock-knock / Who's there? / Anna Maria Alberghetti / Anna Maria Alberghetti Who? / "Anna Maria Alberghetti in a taxi, Honey...".
• The tune features in the 1971 Vincent Price horror film The Abominable Dr. Phibes.
• Robert Redford is singing it as he gets ill by the piano in the 1984 movie The Natural.
• Kristin Scott Thomas sings a portion of it to Ralph Fiennes as they are driving through the desert in 1996 film The English Patient.
• Abe Simpson sings it while getting ready for his date with Beatrice in the "Old Money" episode of The Simpsons.
• The opening lines of the song are quoted on the rear cover of The Band's eponymous 1969 album.
• In the premiere episode of the TV series M*A*S*H*, it is background music during a party scene.
• Performed by Anissa Jones and Pepe Brown in the Elvis movie The Trouble with Girls.
• Performed by Antoinette Brown in episode 3 of AMC's Interview with the Vampire
• Played by a dance band at the Summer Ball in the 1954 novel Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis.