Popular Music in America. Schools and colleges from Tulane to Slippery Rock copied it (sometimes with attribution). It was written in 1910 by Mark W. Sheafe, '06, Clarence A. (Tod) Robbins, '11, and Thornton W. Allen, '13. It has been recorded by virtually every important jazz and swing musician, including Glenn Miller (with Tex Beneke on vocals), Louis Armstrong, Kay Kyser, Hal Kemp and the Dukes of Dixieland. "The Swing" was a trademark of the New Orleans showman Pete Fountain. The trumpeter Red Nichols played it (and Danny Kaye pretended to play it) in the 1959 movie The Five Pennies. (Here is an audio excerpt from a 1944 recording by Jan Garber, a prominent dance-band leader of the era. Here is an exuberant instrumental version by a group called the Dixie Boys, which YouTube dates to 2006.)
== Notable alumni ==
Washington and Lee University is the alma mater of three United States Supreme Court justices, a Nobel Prize laureate, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the Tony Award, and the Emmy Award, as well …
