Don Dunning was a trombone player and band leader who worked Black vaudeville during the 1930s and ’40s with Winstead’s Mighty Minstrels, Irvin C. Miller’s Brown Skin Models, Robinson’s Silver Minstrels, and no doubt others. Willie Jones and Dunning were used by Miller to find performers from the “carnival people and the minstrel people,” Jones said, whenever replacements were needed while the shows were on the road. Both Willie Jones, who appears in “Pitch,” uncredited, and Mattie Sloan,  who was working with Winstead when “Pitch” was filmed, agreed that Dunning performed in and led bands and orchestras for both Miller and Winstead; many performers show up in press reports during those decades especially associated with both those shows as well as Silas Green from New Orleans at one time or another. 

It’s not entirely clear which songs on the “Pitch a Boogie Woogie” soundtrack include Dunning’s orchestra–perhaps all but Tabu Mike’s “I Heard You Say” and the Grand Finale version of the title song.

Alma Dunning is listed as a chorus dancer with Robinson’s Silver Minstrels in 1936 while Don Dunning is listed as in the band while they are 

Sources

Hayes, Bob. “Here and There.” Chicago Defender 29 Nov 1941: 20

Jones, Willie. Personal interview. Philadelphia, PA

Sloan, Mattie. Personal interviews. Laurinburg, NC.

Notes & routess for shows and performers as published in the Chicago Defender and Baltimore Afro-American

John Warner, who created the band stands, was better at lettering than spelling.