Tiger Rag - Famous Later Recordings

Famous Later Recordings

The Canadian Brass tuba player Chuck Daellenbach has become internationally associated with Luther Henderson's "Tuba Tiger Rag." He has performed this work hundreds of time, and recorded it most recently on the best-selling "Takes Flight" CD for the Opening Day label, a CanadianIndy label affiliated with Arkiv Music and NOXOS. This adaptation has taken a work associated with Dixieland and Sports onto the major concert halls around the globe.

The Tiger Rag became a standard, with over 136 cover versions by 1942 alone. Famous artists who covered the song included Art Tatum, Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra (in a version with lyrics), Duke Ellington, Bix Beiderbecke, and Louis Armstrong, who released the song at least twice as a 78 single, in 1930 on Okeh and in 1934 on Brunswick.

The Mills Brothers became a national sensation with their hit vocal recording of the song in 1931, and in the same year, the Washboard Rhythm Kings released a version that was later cited as an influence on the subsequent rock & roll genre.

During the early 1930s "Tiger Rag" became a standard showoff piece for Big Band arrangers and soloists, especially in England, where Ambrose, Jack Hylton, Lew Stone, Billy Cotton, Jack Payne, and Ray Noble all made recordings of it. The tune fell from popularity during the Swing era, as it had become something of a cliché.

Nonetheless cover versions continued, including a hit version for Les Paul and Mary Ford in 1952 and a Be-Bop version by Charlie Parker. In 1954 it featured in the Tex Avery-directed MGM cartoon Dixieland Droopy, and it was added to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry in 2002 . Also in 2002, it appeared in the popular computer game Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, and in 2005 it featured in an advert for the Microsoft Xbox 360 games console.