Library

Ain't Misbehavin'

Fats Waller, Harry Brooks and Andy Razaf

Style
Jazz
Tradition
Jazz standard
Form
AABA, 32 bars
Key
E♭
Level
4
Played on
Voice

In the public domain. Source

Music

The 32 bar chorus. Swing the eighths.

90bpm

Click any note to start from there

History

Fats Waller and Harry Brooks wrote the music and Andy Razaf the words for Connie's Hot Chocolates, a 1929 revue at Connie's Inn in Harlem. Mills Music published it that year. The show moved to the Hudson Theatre on Broadway in June 1929 as Hot Chocolates. Louis Armstrong played a trumpet solo on the song from the orchestra pit, and it went over so well that he was brought up on stage to play it.

Six recordings of it were hits in 1929, among them ones by Leo Reisman, Armstrong, Ruth Etting and Waller himself. Waller sang it again in the 1943 film Stormy Weather, and in 1978 it gave its name to a Broadway revue of his songs.