A Century of ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’

There are songs that have entered the jazz vocabulary and never left: “Body and Soul,” “Stardust,” “Autumn Leaves,” and many others. We call these tunes “standards.” But there is no tune quite as standard as “Sweet Georgia Brown,” written 100 years ago, in 1925, by Ben Bernie and African-American composer Maceo Pinkard, with lyrics by Kenneth Casey. It was unusual to have interracial writing teams at that time—still is, in fact. However, chances are that Bernie wasn’t really co-composer but was given credit as part of a common practice for songwriters to share credit with bandleaders willing to record their songs.

Syncopated Times readers will be familiar with Ben Bernie, who had his first band in the early 1920s (pianist Oscar Levant was in that band). He became nationally famous through radio broadcasts and his recordings for a number of labels were consistent sellers through the 1920s-’30s.

Kenneth Casey is less well known. He was a successful child actor in silent films, then led his own band on radio and records, wrote stage scores and headed publishing and theatrical companies. As far as songwriting goes, as with Ben Bernie, “Sweet Georgia Brown” is his only claim to fame.

Maceo Pinkard, from West Virginia, was one of the most important early black bandleaders, songwriters and the first African-American publishing firm in New York City. The Pace-Handy Publishing Company preceded him in 1912 in Memphis. Apart from “Sweet Georgia Brown,” his songs include “Sugar,” “Gimme a Little Kiss, Will Ya Huh?,” “At Twilight,” “Them There Eyes,” and “You Can’t Tell the Difference After Dark” for Alberta Hunter. Pinkard also wrote and produced the Broadway musical comedy show Liza. It was Pinkard who ushered Duke Ellington into the world of New York City publishing, facilitating Ellington’s attachment to Mills Publishing. Irving Mills became Ellington’s manager and continued in that role for many years.

The first recording of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” on March 19, 1925, was by Ben Bernie and his Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra. One of the first covers of the tune came out later in 1925 by The California Ramblers, with Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey and Red Nichols. The song was also a hit in 1925 for Isham Jones and His Orchestra as well as Ethel Waters. Since that time, the tune has been recorded thousands of times. One of its most famous incarnations is the one by Brother Bones and His Shadows in 1949. Bones’ instrumental version features musical bones and whistling. The Harlem Globetrotters adopted that version as their theme song in 1952 and that’s still the music we hear every time that singular basketball team takes the court.

Many people don’t realize there’s actually a verse to the song, since it’s seldom performed-especially by instrumentalists. On the technical side: The song is written in a 32-bar ABAC form. The harmonic progression is based on a series of secondary dominants that arrive on the tonic chord at the end of the B section while the first phrase of the C section briefly modulates to the relative minor. Suffice it to say that there’s enough there to whet an improviser’s interest.

Songs written using the chords of “Sweet Georgia Brown” (called ‘contrafacts’) include “Bright Mississippi” by Thelonious Monk, “Sweet Clifford” by Clifford Brown, “Tea Pot” by JJ Johnson, “Miss Who” by Art Pepper, “Hollywood Stampede” by Coleman Hawkins and “Dig,” by Miles Davis. Davis recorded the tune again, but under the title “Donna,” which was credited to Jackie McLean. TST readers might come up with some other versions.

The lyrics of the song can be interpreted in various ways. Some stretch it to say that Georgia was a prostitute, but my own take is that she is what was known in the 1920s as a vamp. There are two stories about where the name of the song and the lyrics came from, and both are fairy tales. One is that Dr. George Thaddeus Brown of the Georgia House of Representatives and his wife had a baby girl. Shortly after the child’s birth, the Georgia General Assembly passed a resolution stating that the baby would be named “Georgia” after the state. That never happened. Second, when Brown was in New York City for medical school, he supposedly met Ben Bernie and told him about having a daughter with one brown eye and one green eye. For one thing, Bernie was neither the composer nor the lyricist. For another, it was the 1890s when Dr. Brown was in medical school in New York, decades before his daughter Georgia was born.

“Sweet Georgia Brown” is still being called at jam sessions, used in film and television soundtracks and given new recorded interpretations. Why does this song still inhabit our musical universe after a hundred years? No one can have the definitive answer, but maybe it’s because there’s an irresistible swing to the melody and enough movement in the harmony for the listener to be both surprised and satisfied at the resolution of the tensions. Even after millions of choruses have been taken, vocalists continue to explore nuances in the lyrics and improvisers still use the melody and harmony as a launching pad to explore new ideas.

So Georgia, here’s looking at you!