(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue

Waller, Brooks and Razaf wrote it for Hot Chocolates in 1929, the same show as "Ain't Misbehavin'," and Edith Wilson sang it. Razaf's biographer Barry Singer tells how Dutch Schultz, who backed the show, demanded a comic song about a dark skinned woman. Razaf wrote a lament about color prejudice instead, and the opening night crowd sat stunned before they cheered.

Louis Armstrong recorded it first, in 1929, and Ethel Waters followed in 1930. Ralph Ellison opens his 1952 novel Invisible Man with its narrator listening to Armstrong's record.