Jimmy Mundy was born James Mundy in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 28, 1907. He learned to play the saxophone as a child but gained his arranging skills in his early twenties playing in the local bands of Erskine Tate, Tommy Miles and Carroll Dickerson.

In 1932 he sat in the saxophone chair of the Earl Hines band for four years, but swiftly developing a reputation as an arranger. Arranging a couple of tunes for Claude Hopkins in 1932, it was after selling one of his arrangements to Benny Goodman in 1935 that Mundy was…