BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS
Description: Vocalist, Music Publisher, Film Producer, USA
Known For: In Irving Mills and his Hotsy Totsy Gang
Music Styles: Popular
Location: United States of America
Date Born: 16th January 1894
Location Born: New York City, New York, United States of America
Date Died: 21st April 1985
Location Died: New York City, New York, United States of America
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BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
Irving Mills
An American jazz music publisher, also known by the name of Joe Primrose.
He founded Mills Music with his brother Jack in 1919. Between 1919 and 1965, when they sold Mills Music, Inc., they built and became the largest independent music publisher in the world.
Although not a musician himself (he did sing, however), Irving decided to put together his own studio recording group.
In Irving Mills and his Hotsy Totsy Gang he had for sidemen: Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Arnold Brillhardt, Arthur Schutt, and Manny Klein. Other variations of his bands featured Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Red Nichols (Irving gave Red Nichols the tag “and his Five Pennies”).
One night he went down to a little club on West 49th Street between 7th Avenue and Broadway called the Kentucky Club. The owner had brought in a little band from Washington, D.C. and wanted to know what Irving thought of them.
That was Duke Ellington and his Kentucky Club Orchestra, whom he signed the very next day. They made a lot of records together, not only under the name of Duke Ellington, but built groups around Duke’s side men.
Ellington and Mills collaborated on quite a number of tunes that became popular standards: “Mood Indigo”, “Solitude”, “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”, “Sophisticated Lady”, “Black and Tan Fantasy”.
He put Duke Ellington into the Cotton Club. Mills was one of the first to record black and white musicians together, using twelve white musicians and the Duke Ellington Orchestra on a 12″ 78 rpm disc performing St. Louis Blues.
Irving was recording all the time and became the head of the American Recording Company, which is now Columbia Records.
He produced one picture, Stormy Weather, for Twentieth Century Fox in 1943, which starred jazz greats Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Zutty Singleton, and Fats Waller and the legendary dancers the Nicholas Brothers and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.
His place in the history of jazz is founded primarily on his business skills rather than his singing and songwriting abilities.
Irving Mills died in 1985.