All God's Chillun Got Rhythm is a popular song composed by Walter Jurmann and Bronislaw Kaper, with lyrics by Gus Kahn, written for the 1937 Marx Brothers film A Day at the Races. In the film, the number is performed in an elaborate musical sequence featuring Ivie Anderson and a large ensemble, serving as one of the picture's showpiece moments. The title is a play on the traditional spiritual All God's Chillun Got Wings, substituting a secular celebration of rhythm for the original's religious imagery. The melody is buoyant and rhythmically infectious, built on a swinging, uptempo framework that made it a natural fit for jazz performance. Jurmann and Kaper, both European emigres who had fled to Hollywood, brought a craftsmanlike approach to popular songwriting that resulted in harmonically interesting material beneath the song's accessible surface. The chord changes proved especially attractive to bebop and hard bop musicians, who found in them a fertile basis for improvisation. The tune's harmonic structure has served as the foundation for several jazz contrafacts, most notably Paul Chambers' composition Visitation, demonstrating its lasting utility as a vehicle for new melodic invention. Though less frequently performed as a vocal number in the decades since its film debut, All God's Chillun Got Rhythm has maintained a presence in the jazz world primarily through its chord progression and the original compositions it inspired.
