Irving Mills was a music publisher and owner of Mills Music with his brother Jack. He also was a singer, songwriter, A&R; man and manager of several bands that included Cab Calloway, Benny Carter, Fletcher Henderson, Mills Blue Rhythm Band and the Duke Ellington Orchestra, which he managed from 1926 to 1939.

His association with Duke ran deep; besides being their manager he wrote lyrics to several of Ellington’s songs and sang on many of their records. Duke and other members of his orchestra had mixed emotions about their business relations with Irving Mills. In general they held him in high regard, but felt that as publisher he sometimes took authors’ credit and royalties that were not deserved. On the other hand nearly all agreed that much of Ellington’s early commercial success was because of Mills business skills. It should be noted that the addition of publishers’ names to songs was common practice in those days and the same accusations were leveled at most publishers of the era.

The Hotsy-Totsy Gang records made under Irving Mills name between 1928 and 1930 assembled some of the greatest White Jazz musicians of the era and often produced spectacular results. Sometimes Mills sang on the records, other times he just arranged the record dates and selected the musicians. As a singer Mills was not without talent.

Here’s a recording by the Hotsy-Totsy Gang that is “so hot that the music had to be written on sheets of asbestos”. It’s from Brunswick Brevities which was a short radio program that was broadcast in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This episode featured Irving Mills and his Hotsy Totsy Gang performing “Nobody’s Sweetheart Now” and Hoagy Carmichael singing a great version of his song “Harvey”. Click here to listen to it!

Thanks to Dennis Pereyra for his help with this page.