Ducky Wucky/Walking and Swinging/Rhythm-a-ning

Mark Stryker · October 12, 2022

Gang -- here's an interesting question that grew out of a Twitter exchange I was involved in with Darcy James Argue, who had posted the 1932 recording of Ellington's "Ducky Wucky." Kind of a long wind-up, so bear with me.

I noted that what Lawrence Brown plays in bars 7 and 8 of the first A section of "Ducky Wucky" is basically Monk's "Rhythm-a-ning" speeded up-- but since "Rhythm-a-ning" itself was appropriated by Monk from Mary Lou Williams' "Walking and Swinging": (1936), this begs the question: Did Williams pick up the melodic phrase from "Ducky Wucky?" And since that phrase appears only in the first A section of "Ducky Wucky," is it even correct to assume that Ellington (or Bigard, who shares composing credit), even wrote it? Brown may have improvised it.

Darcy replied: "I think it was a fairly commonplace bit of vocabulary in this era, but your hypothesis makes sense. And the boogie-woogie inflections in the intro to 'Ducky Wucky' certainly bring MLW to mind!"

Me: "I wouldn't disagree that the phrase was likely common practice material, but if so, then then it should appear on some other recording. If you can't find one, that's not a dealbreaker cuz, as I always say, the history of jazz is not the same as the history of jazz on record. ... But in this case, it would go a long way to proving the hypothesis. Any early jazz scholars or sleuths out there know of another example of the Ducky Wucky/Walking and Swinging/Rhythm-a-ning phrase showing up on record in the early to mid '30s?”

Edited October 12, 2022 by Mark Stryker