It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
Duke Ellington (1931). Excerpt from "The 50 Songs that Gave Birth to Rock and Roll"
It doesn’t get much more prophetic than this. Swing is not rock and roll, to be sure. But the big band jazz era is an essential chapter in the pre-evolution of rock and roll.
The great Duke Ellington saw it coming. So says this tune, which was important both for its commercial enormity and its core philosophy.
This title phrase is actually attributed to Ellington’s trumpeter Bubber Miley, who was dying of tuberculosis at the time. Written in collaboration with Irving Mills, “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” declared that the old way of making jazz was quickly going out of style.
Washington, D.C.-born Ellington (1899) had already made his reputation at Harlem’s legendary Cotton Club by the time of this 1931 recording. But with “It Don’t Mean a Thing”, Ellington predicted and blueprinted The Next Big Thing.
But this was hardly his intention. Ellington meant only to emphasize the importance of rhythm in the music of the Harlem Renaissance. The word “swing” had not yet been incorporated into the popular lexicon of jazz. Ellington signaled its sudden ascendance. In short order, swing really was everything.
Rhythm moved to center stage during the drum-heavy swing boom. It would also mark an important departure in American popular music. This was the beginning of the movement away from classical European musical convention and into something more African in origin.
Ellington often balked at this type of over-analysis. But his vision cannot be denied. This composition would become both a recording of enormous consequence and a statement of purpose, not just for the swing movement that would immediately follow, but for the rocking and rolling that descended there from.
Duke Ellington died at the age of 75, leaving an inestimably huge mark on popular music and American cultural identity.
See the full list of 50 Songs that Gave Birth to Rock and Roll