Things Ain't What They Used to Be
song
"Things Ain't What They Used to Be" is a 1942 jazz standard with music by Mercer Ellington and lyrics by Ted Persons.
Background
In 1941 there was a strike against the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, of which Duke Ellington was a member. Because of the strike he could not air his songs on the radio. Instead, he used songs written by his son Mercer and pianist Billy Strayhorn. Strayhorn's compositions of this time include "Take the 'A' Train", "Chelsea Bridge" and "Day Dream". Mercer wrote "Things Ain't What They Used to Be", "Blue Serge" and "Moon Mist".
Jazz musician and historian Chris Tyle argues that most likely Mercer Ellington came up with the melody and his father then arranged the song for the band. The song is most often played as an instrumental. Lyrics were written by Ted Persons. Johnny Hodges played it first, in Hollywood on July 3, 1941.
The public source identifies “Things Ain't What They Used to Be” as song. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Things, Ain't and What.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q120112. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942 and 1941.
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This entry incorporates text from “Things Ain't What They Used to Be” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.