[4] The song was copyrighted, published, and credited to band members Eddie Edwards, Nick LaRocca, Henry Ragas, Tony Sbarbaro, and Larry Shields in 1917.

According to author Frank Tirro, But even before the first recording, several musicians had achieved prominence as leading jazz performers, and several numbers of what was to become the standard repertoire had already been developed.

"Tiger Rag" and "Oh, Didn't He Ramble" were played long before the first jazz recording, and the names of Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, Bunk Johnson, Papa Celestin, Sidney Bechet, King Oliver, Freddie Keppard, Kid Ory, and Papa Laine were already well known to the jazz community.

In his book Jazz: A History, Frank Tirro states, "Morton claims credit for transforming a French quadrille that was performed in different meters into ‘Tiger Rag’".

[7] The Italian musicologist Vincenzo Caporaletti has shown how the authorial self-attributions of Jelly Roll Morton are not reliable, by means of an analysis conducted on the first complete transcription in musical notation of Morton's Library of Congress performances (1938) with conclusions defined by Bruce Boyd Raeburn "justifiably compelling" on a scientific level.

[8] Furthermore, Caporaletti has accurately identified the "floating folk strains" that Nick La Rocca assembled to create "Tiger Rag".

Archaeologist Sylvanus Morley played it repeatedly on his wind up phonograph while exploring the ruins of Chichen Itza in the 1920s.

[12] Musicians who played it included Art Tatum, Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra (in a version with lyrics), Duke Ellington, Bix Beiderbecke, and Louis Armstrong, who released the song at least three times as a 78 single, twice for Okeh in 1930 [13] and 1932,[13] and for the French arm of Brunswick in 1934.

The Light Crust Doughboys recorded a 1936 western swing version of "Tiger Rag" to wide success in the Gene Autry movie Oh!

Charlie Parker recorded a bebop version in 1954, the same year it appeared in the MGM cartoon Dixieland Droopy.

The Auburn University Marching Band also plays "Tiger Rag" as part of its pre-game performance before all home football games.

"Tiger Rag" became a jazz standard that was covered by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Ted Lewis, Joe Jackson, the Mills Brothers,[20] and others.