Black and Blue (What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue is a 1929 jazz standard and racial protest song composed by Fats Waller and Harry Brooks with lyrics by Andy Razaf. It debuted in the Broadway musical Hot Chocolates (1929), sung by Edith Wilson, and Razaf biographer Barry Singer notes that Razaf was pressured by financier Dutch Schultz to write a comedic number, but he wrote a stark lament instead. The opening night was met with silence before the song became a hit. The show also featured Ain't Misbehavin' and Honeysuckle Rose. Louis Armstrong was the first to record it in 1929, with Ethel Waters recording it in 1930 and Frankie Laine in 1946. The song is a jazz standard and a racial protest piece, and it appears in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as the protagonist listens to Armstrong's recording in a basement.
