"Jitterbug Waltz" is a 1942 jazz composition by

Fats Waller Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller (May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943) was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, and singer. His innovations in the Harlem stride style laid much of the basis for modern jazz piano. A widely popular star ...

. Initially recorded the same year by his

jazz combo A jazz band (jazz ensemble or jazz combo) is a musical ensemble that plays jazz music. Jazz bands vary in the quantity of its members and the style of jazz that they play but it is common to find a jazz band made up of a rhythm section and a ho ...

, Fats Waller and His Rhythm, it has been performed and recorded by numerous musicians, including

Art Tatum Arthur Tatum Jr. (, October 13, 1909 – November 5, 1956) was an American jazz pianist who is widely regarded as one of the greatest ever. From early in his career, fellow musicians acclaimed Tatum's technical ability as extraordinary. Tatum a ...

Erroll Garner Erroll Louis Garner (June 15, 1921 – January 2, 1977) was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His instrumental ballad "Misty", his best-known composition, has become a jazz standard. It was first re ...

Chet Atkins Chester Burton Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), also known as "Mister Guitar" and "the Country Gentleman", was an American musician who, along with Owen Bradley and Bob Ferguson (musician), Bob Ferguson, helped create the Nash ...

Vince Guaraldi Vincent Anthony Guaraldi (; birth name, né Dellaglio, July 17, 1928 – February 6, 1976) was an American jazz pianist best known for composing music for animated television adaptations of the ''Peanuts'' comic strip. His compositions for this s ...

, Butch Thompson,

Al Hirt Alois Maxwell "Al" Hirt (November 7, 1922 – April 27, 1999) was an American trumpeter and bandleader. He is best remembered for his million-selling recordings of "Java (instrumental), Java" and the accompanying album ''Honey in the Horn (album ...

Eric Dolphy Eric Allan Dolphy Jr. (June 20, 1928 – June 29, 1964) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer, and bandleader. Primarily an alto saxophonist, bass clarinetist, and flautist, Dolphy was one of several multi-instrumentalists to gain ...

Michel Legrand Michel Jean Legrand (; 24 February 1932 – 26 January 2019) was a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, jazz pianist, and singer. Legrand was a prolific composer, having written over 200 film and television scores, in addition to ma ...

, and David Murray.

Composition and recording

The song is in the key of

E♭ major E-flat major is a major scale based on E, consisting of the pitches E, F, G, A, B, C, and D. Its key signature has three flats. Its relative minor is C minor, and its parallel minor is E minor, (or enharmonically D minor). The E-flat major ...

and is in

3/4 time Triple metre (or Am. triple meter, also known as triple time) is a musical metre characterized by a ''primary'' division of 3 beats to the bar, usually indicated by 3 (simple) or 9 ( compound) in the upper figure of the time signature, with , a ...

. The melody was inspired by piano exercises that Waller's son, Maurice, had been playing at the time. Maurice claims that ''Jitterbug Waltz'' was the first jazz waltz ever written. When Waller composed "Jitterbug Waltz", he was 38 years old and at the high point of his career as a veteran recording artist for

RCA Victor RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records (its former longtime rival), Arista Records and Epic ...

. It is notable for being one of the first jazz records recorded with a

Hammond organ The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert, first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding #Drawbars, drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, sound was created ...

, an instrument that gained popularity in the genre soon after.

In popular media

* Waller's original recording was licensed for use in the 2010 video game

Bioshock 2 ''BioShock 2'' is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Marin and published by 2K Games. It was released worldwide for PlayStation 3, Microsoft Windows, Windows, and Xbox 360 on February 9, 2010; Feral Interactive released an OS X v ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Jitterbug Waltz 1942 songs Songs with music by Fats Waller Al Hirt songs Jazz compositions Songs about dancing