Chick Webb: If Dreams Come True as heard in Woody Allen's <i>Stardust Memories</i> (1980)

Just as Cole Porter's "Let's Misbehave" flaunted jazz's naughty influence on 1920s pop culture, "If Dreams Come True," with straight-muted brass, sugary saxes and two-beat shuffle, reflects the less-ballyhooed embrace of white dance music by black jazz bands. During the 1930s, Chick Webb and His Orchestra were the house band at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom, where whites and blacks danced, if not necessarily together, at least side by side. Three decades later, the inclusive spirit of "If Dreams Come True" would achieve its oratorical apotheosis in Dr. King's eloquent "I Have a Dream." Regrettably, into the new millennium, such dreams have still not come true.