American popular culture went mad for swing music in the late 1930s, and scenes like this one show up again and again in not only cartoons, but regular films as well. It was considered particularly funny when some stuck-up intellectual or society person busted loose and got into the groove too, just as the professor does at the end of this cartoon.
My dad was 10 years in 1936 when he first heard Sing Sing Sing by Benny Goodman. He went mad for swing jazz immediately and was a lifelong fan. I remember him playing his old 78s on Sunday afternoons. I have a lifelong love for Ella Fitzgerald thanks to my dad. He died in 1998.
