James Francis Durante, was born to a New York City Barber and his wife on February 10, 1893. His father bought young Jimmy a piano, a gift that would affect the rest of Durante's life. Jimmy left school to help support his family in the seventh grade. Although he put reading, writing and 'rithmetic on the back burner, he kept up his piano studies. His dream was to play piano in a saloon for money. At seventeen he got his first break at Diamond Tony's Saloon in Brooklyn's Coney Island. He loved the music of Scott Joplin, and he emulated Joplin's style billing himself as "Ragtime Jimmy."

From 1912 to 1923, Jimmy performed with several incarnations of his "Original Dixieland Jazz Band." He had recorded with some of the biggest names in jazz of the day and his New Orleans style "tickling of the ivories" became one of the hottest acts around. His popularity brought him to vaudeville where he teamed up with veterans Eddie Jackson and Lou Clayton. The trio?s act ventured into the comedy-music flavor and their success led them to open the "Club Durant" in New York City in 1923. The team, known as "The Syncopating Skeeters," became regulars on Broadway and Jimmy landed a feature role in the play "Jumbo." He became an overnight sensation and appeared regularly on various radio shows, eventually landing his own program. In 1962 he reprised his role in a film adaptation of "Billy Rose's Jumbo."

In 1929 he starred in his first movie, "Roadhouse Nights." He would go on to make thirty nine more movies including his last appearance on the silver screen in Stanley Kramer's "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad World" in 1963. On his familiar radio show he regularly pushed the envelope, anything for a laugh. One of his famous bits was that he was continuously working on a symphony. He became known for his quick-witted misuse of the English language, and referred to his symphony's title not as "Rhapsody In Blue," but "Inka Dinka Do." In 1934 he recorded that song as a novelty, one that would become his signature theme song for his many radio shows throughout the 40s including "The Jimmy Durante Show" and "The Camel Comedy Caravan." The 50s brought television, and the masses fell in love with his oversized nose, gruff voice and stiff-legged shimmy. He became a national celebrity, even more so than he had been.

As famous as he became because of Broadway, radio and television, it is safe to say that Jimmy was best loved as a stage performer. He was one of the most popular nightclub acts in the 40s and 50s, headlining at such venues as the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, the Copa Cabana and Madison Square Garden in New York and the Empire Room and The Chez Paree in Chicago. Jimmy passed away quietly in 1980 due to complications of several strokes

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