"Rockin' in Rhythm" was for many years, Duke Ellington's theme song before Billy Strayhorn wrote "Take the 'A' Train" in 1939. Duke kept this work in his repertoire and used it as an encore or as a way to bring the band on stage. Ernie Wilkins writes a brilliant buoyant chart of this perennial with plenty of ooh-wahs coming quickly from the brass. The extroverted jazz man Harry James plays here with plenty of brilliance and flashy technique, his solo harking back to the famous solo in "Sing, Sing, Sing" backed with brilliant drumming by Buddy Rich who was a frequent visitor to the James band in the years preceding his starting a band of his own in 1966.