East St. Louis Toodle-Oo is a jazz tune written by Duke Ellington and Bubber Miley. It was recorded by Ellington and his Washingtonians and released in 1927 as a Columbia Records single, with Hop Head on the B-side. It was one of Ellington’s first charting hits and a key example of his early jungle music style. The track is famous for Miley’s growling plunger-muted trumpet, a sound that influenced later Ellington trumpeters. It appeared on several labels and under various titles from 1926 to 1930 and entered the public domain in the United States in 2023. A notable later cover is Steely Dan’s 1974 version that uses a talk box to imitate Miley’s trumpet.
