Irving Harold Mills (born Isadore Minsky; January 18, 1894 Odessa, Ukraine – April 21, 1985) was a music publisher, musician, lyricist, and jazz promoter.

[a][3] His father, Hyman Minsky, was a hatmaker who immigrated from Odessa to the United States with his wife Sofia (née Dudis).

Soon after, he was joined in the enterprise by Irving Mills[8] who served as vice-president of the company with Jack as president, and Samuel Jesse Buzzell as secretary and counselor.

[15] Gulf & Western acquired Esquire Inc. in 1983 and sold the Belwin-Mills print business to Columbia Pictures Publications (CPP) in 1985.

At the time of the sale, its top 10 earning compositions were: By the end of 1963, 114 titles brought in 77 percent of the royalty income for five years.

Mills discovered a number of songwriters, including Zez Confrey, Sammy Fain, Harry Barris, Gene Austin, Hoagy Carmichael, Jimmy McHugh, and Dorothy Fields.

He advanced or even started the careers of Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Ben Pollack, Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, Will Hudson,[b] and Raymond Scott.

Mills started the studio recording group Irving Mills and his Hotsy Totsy Gang with Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Arnold Brillhardt (clarinet, soprano and alto sax),[c] Arthur Schutt, and Mannie Klein.

The group was a racially integrated ensemble at a time when such groups were legally banned from public theatres, and it included several highly regarded jazz musicians, including Red Allen, Jack Bland, Pee Wee Russell, Fats Waller, Eddie Condon, and Jimmy Lord.

Mills stayed the rest of the evening listening to the band, Duke Ellington and his Kentucky Club Orchestra.

Mills was one of the first to record black and white musicians together, using twelve white musicians and the Duke Ellington Orchestra on a 12-inch 78 rpm record featuring the "St. Louis Blues" on one side and a medley of songs called "Gems from Blackbirds of 1928" on the other, on which Mills sang with the Ellington Orchestra.

Master's best-selling artists were Duke Ellington, Raymond Scott, Hudson-De Lange Orchestra, Casper Reardon, and Adrian Rollini.

Variety's roster included Cab Calloway, Red Nichols, the small groups from Ellington's band led by Barney Bigard, Cootie Williams, Rex Stewart, and Johnny Hodges, as well as Noble Sissle, Frankie Newton, The Three Peppers, Chu Berry, Billy Kyle, and other jazz and pop performers around New York.

This matrix series was then used until WM-1150, the final being a session by the Adrian Rollini Trio performing "The Girl With the Light Blue Hair," Voc/Okeh 5979, May 7, 1940, New York City.

He produced one film, Stormy Weather, for 20th Century Fox in 1943, which starred Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Zutty Singleton, Fats Waller, and dancers the Nicholas Brothers and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson.