"Chinatown, My Chinatown" was written in 1906 by lyricist William Jerome and composer Jean Schwartz, a Tin Pan Alley partnership active from 1901 that also produced "Mister Dooley" and "Bedelia". The song was interpolated into the Broadway revue Up and Down Broadway in 1910, the year it was published, and became a national hit in 1915 after several recordings from late 1914. The American Quartet with Billy Murray reached number one on Victor, and Grace Kerns and J. B. Wells had a popular Columbia recording. It is considered the partners' biggest hit. Musically, the melody is pentatonic and moves in parallel fourths and fifths, an exoticist technique. The original tempo was slow, later adapted to fox-trot and hot jazz tempos. The song is considered an early jazz standard, recorded by Red Nichols and His Five Pennies in 1929, Fletcher Henderson, Louis Armstrong and Louis Prima, among others, between 1928 and 1942.
