Darktown Strutters' Ball is a popular song with music and lyrics by Shelton Brooks, published in 1917. It is regarded as both a popular song and a jazz standard. Soon after publication, Sophie Tucker included it in her vaudeville routine, and the original sheet music sold more than three million copies. The English-language account describes it as a stylistic generic copy of Nat D. Ayer's 1914 British hit "At the Foxtrot Ball, That's All".
The earliest dated commercial recording is by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, made on May 30, 1917, for Columbia; that recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2006. Later versions include those by James Reese Europe's 369th Infantry Band (1919), Chick Webb (1934), the Boswell Sisters (1934), Fats Waller (1939), the Dave Brubeck Quartet (1960) and Lou Monte's Italian-style parody (1954). Ella Fitzgerald, Django Reinhardt, The Platters, Julie London, Fats Domino and Catherine Russell also recorded it. The tune served as the squadron tune of No. 56 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War, was used in a Tom and Jerry cartoon (1950), and featured in the film Little Boy Lost (1953), with Bing Crosby and Nicole Maurey.
