“The Sheik” was introduced in late 1921 on a Victor record by the Club Royal Orchestra. The following year, their recording and Ray Miller’s landed in third place in the charts.

• Club Royal Orchestra (1922, #3)
• Ray Miller and His Orchestra (1922, #3)
• Jack Teagarden and His Orchestra (1939, #14)
• Spike Jones and His City Slickers (1943, #19)
• Super-Sonics (1953, #22)

Tin Pan Alley was ever vigilant to cash in on popular trends, whether it be automobiles, airplanes, radio or motion pictures. A 1921 film The Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino, was perfect fodder, and on the heels of its release music publishers Waterson, Berlin and Snyder published “The Sheik of Araby,” sometimes known as just “The Sheik.”

Valentino’s movie appearance solidified his status as a screen icon, especially among women who were known to swoon during his film appearances. The Sheik was based on a 1919 romance novel by English writer Edith Maude Hull and relates the story of an English girl who is kidnapped and seduced by an Arab sheik. The girl eventually falls in love with him and they marry. She discovers in reality that he is a British aristocrat. Valentino starred in a follow-up, The Son of the Sheik, in 1926, prior to his untimely death.

The Club Royal Orchestra was led by saxophonist Clyde Doerr, who had risen to fame through his work with Art Hickman’s Orchestra. The group performed at the Club Royal and substituted for Paul Whiteman at the Palais Royal in New York. Whiteman, who was a friend of Doerr’s from their days working in San Francisco, secured a contract for the saxophonist to record for Victor Records. Their first recording was “The Sheik.” Whiteman resented the record’s success and severed his ties with Doerr, although he continued to record with the Club Royal Orchestra for Victor and under his own name for Columbia. Eventually he severed his ties with the band and became involved with freelance recording and radio work.

Popular vocalist/actor Eddie Cantor performed “The Sheik” in a short-lived Broadway show, Make It Snappy. In true Tin Pan Alley fashion publishers came out with a number of offspring, including “She’s My Sheba, I’m Her Sheik” and another success for Cantor, “Lovin’ Sam, the Sheik of Alabam.”

Trombonist Jack Teagarden is undoubtedly a big reason for the song’s jazz standard status, first with his 1930 recording with cornetist Red Nichols and again in 1939 with his own big band version.