The irrepressible, bouncy, spirited song features a syncopated ragtime melody and was popular for dancing the shimmy (as Ella Fitzgerald sang in her later recording) and fox trot in crowded dance halls. These and other popular dances, such as Jelly Roll Morton’s 1915 fox trot Jelly Roll Blues, are featured in the lyrics:

“Remember when we get there, honey
The two-steps I'm goin’ to have ’em all
Goin’ to dance out both my shoes
When they play the Jelly Roll Blues
Tomorrow night, at the Darktown Strutters’ Ball
…
We’ll win that fifty-dollar prize
When we step out and Walk the Dog” (a reference to Brooks’s earlier song and its dance).

An ASCAP All-time Hit Parade selection of 1963, Darktown Strutters’ Ball has remained popular with countless jazz bands, barbershop quartets, and country and rock musicians, a hundred years after it was written: Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians, Chet Atkins, Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Hank Snow, Arthur Fields, Dean Martin, Fats Waller, Lawrence Welk, The Beach Boys, Hoagy Carmichael, Bing Crosby, Bo Diddley, Les Paul, The Platters, Ricky Skaggs, Pete Seeger, Catherine Russell, Jeannie Seely, and The Beatles (who did not record it). Lou Monte’s “Italian style” parody was a Billboard chart hit in 1954, and The Ted Mulry Gang had an Australian hit in 1976.

Betty Grable sang it in the film “The Dolly Sisters,” as did Robert Redford in “The Natural,” and it has featured in TV’s M*A*S*H*.

Songwriter, pianist and actor Shelton Brooks (1886 – 1975) was born in Amherstburg, Ontario. Moving to the USA in his teens with his family, Brooks became a ragtime pianist in Detroit and Chicago. He wrote vaudeville songs for Al Jolson and Nora Bayes, and penned the jazz standards Some of These Days and Walkin’ the Dog.