Darktown Strutters' Ball is a 1917 jazz standard written by Shelton Brooks and published that year. The song invites a glamorous outing to the Darktown Ball, with dances like the buck and wing, the two-step, and the Walk the Dog, and it quickly became a popular hit. The best known recording is by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, cut on May 30, 1917 and released by Columbia, which helped launch early jazz and later earned a place in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2006. The tune was introduced in vaudeville by Sophie Tucker and the Six Brown Brothers and sheet music sold in the millions, making it one of the era’s most enduring pre-1920 jazz standards. It has been recorded and performed by many artists over the years and even appeared in films and on television, cementing its place in American popular music history.
