You've heard "Sing, Sing, Sing!" but you might not know it...

...yes, it's the Chips Ahoy! song so, you know, get excited and all. But in all seriousness, there's a lot more to this undeniably catchy tune than meets the eye (or ear); give me the benefit of the doubt and entertain the notion that it's a long damn musical journey between transformative, defining masterpiece and cookie jingle, because "Sing, Sing, Sing!" left a huge imprint in music history.

You'll notice, if you haven't already, that this song has a real pushy, driving beat; if it doesn't make you want to get up and dance, it just might make you want to get up and hit somebody (it did cause what some people called a small riot in Carnegie Hall when it was performed in 1938, but more on that later). Without delving too deep into the history of the song itself, suffice to say it was the creation of Louis Prima primarily, though is commonly associated with Gene Krupa and most often credited to Benny Goodman, all jazz monoliths in their own right. The very least you need to know is that what "Sing, Sing, Sing!" did was define swing music before it became mainstream.

In 1938, probably as a stunt, Benny Goodman's publicist booked him to perform at Carnegie Hall, a classical music bastion known for attracting blue-blood snobs. Essentially, Goodman playing there back then would be just shy of somebody like Marilyn Manson playing on the Lincoln Memorial today. They managed a sell-out crowd, however, and so the show was on.

Before the show started, one man got up to explain to the audience what swing music was, and he took 5,000 words to do it. They were an alien species, and they knew it. However it wasn't a totally hostile crowd; there were "ickies" in the cheap seats, and you might consider them precursors to indie kids nowadays. They "would hang out around the edge of the stage and gyrating, bouncing, and wagging their heads with the music....the forerunners of 'headbangers', if you will." When the show ended with "Sing, Sing, Sing!" you would have thought a grenade went off. This is 1938, and people were rushing the stage en masse. Maybe the monocle-wearing crowd saw that the ickies were doing and wanted to join in, who knows? It was huge - people were dancing in the aisles and this is Carnegie bleeping Hall, here!

That 1938 concert, due in no small part to "Sing, Sing, Sing!", cemented swing into the mainstream of American culture. And of course, swing itself had no small influence on the development of rock.