Bing Crosby and the Rhythm Boys, accompanied by Duke Ellington’s Orchestra, introduced this standard in the 1930 RKO picture Check and Double Check. Their follow-up recording for Victor Records landed in the charts later that year and became Ellington’s first number one recording:

• Duke Ellington and His Orchestra (1930, #1)
• Jacques Renard and His Orchestra (1930, #3)
• Ipana Troubadors (1930, #10)
• Ethel Waters (1931, #8)
• Claude Hopkins and His Orchestra (1934, Orlando Robeson, vocal, #15)

Check and Double Check was the first major film appearance of Duke Ellington and his Orchestra. The band’s first film performance was in the 1929 short feature Black and Tan Fantasy, filmed in New York; Check and Double Check was filmed in Hollywood and was the band’s first visit to the West Coast.

A 1962 radio interview with Ellington, conducted by Canadian broadcaster Jack Cullen, is included in the book the Duke Ellington Reader edited by Mark Tucker. Cullen adroitly asked Duke a number of historically pertinent questions, things that had not been adequately covered in previous interviews or biographies of the bandleader. One of the questions concerned Check and Double Check and “Three Little Words.” Ellington explained that Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby had written the tune to be sung by Duke’s drummer Sonny Greer. But Greer had an attack of the jitters, forcing Ellington to engage Bing Crosby for the vocal duties. After cutting a test recording, director Melville W. Brown nixed Crosby in favor of all three Rhythm Boys, who performed the number-- but only on the soundtrack. In a long shot of the band, the film shows trumpeters Freddy Jenkins, Cootie Williams, and Arthur Whetsol holding small megaphones, pretending to sing. The Hollywood film industry, ever subservient to the political correctness of the time, couldn’t have a white vocal group with a black orchestra.

A 1950 motion picture entitled Three Little Words, starring Fred Astaire and Red Skelton, was the Hollywood adaptation of the life of the songwriting team of Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. Their partnership, begun in 1920, produced a string of hits and lasted until Kalmar’s death in 1947.