Joe Pass Satin Doll Live Solo Guitar Transcription sheet music, Noten, partitura, spartiti, 楽譜

SATIN DOLL

Music: Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn – Lyrics: Johnny Mercer

Year: 1953.

At the beginning of 1953 Duke Ellington left Columbia Records and signed an important contract with Capitol Records. On April 6 he made the first recording session, which included ‘Satin Doll’, ‘Without a Song’ and ‘Cocktails for Two.’ It seems that, initially, Ellington wrote the ‘Satin Doll’ melody and Billy Strayhorn, but it was not considered commercially viable. Five years later Johnny Mercer, co-founder of Capitol Records, wrote a new letter, which is what is known today and is unanimously praised by critics.

It is ignored who refers to the name of ‘Satin Doll.’ Some say that it is Strayhorn’s mother, while others, such as Mercer Ellington, suspect that the mysterious woman is Edna, Duke’s wife, who, on the other hand, always said that she was the recipient of the song.

In 1969, pianist Earl Hines put an ad in Downbeat magazine wishing Duke Ellington a happy seventieth birthday, but in print he added: Remember that I wrote “Satin Doll ‘. Hines never explained more details of his surprising statement, but recorded the song several times, and included it in a tribute album to Ellington.

Billy Strayhorn is the author of ‘Chelsea Bridge’ (1941), ‘Rain Check’ (1942), ‘Act Flower Is a Larsome Thing’ (1944), ‘Lotus Blossom’ (1947) and ‘Lush Life’ (1949). In collaboration with Ellington, he composed ‘Day Dream’ (1941), ‘Submithing to Live for’ (1939) and ‘Satin Doll’ (1953), among many other issues.

Commercial Recordings

About Joe Pass

Joe Pass (born Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalacqua; January 13, 1929 – May 23, 1994) was an American jazz guitarist. Although Pass collaborated with pianist Oscar Peterson and vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, his status as one of the most notable jazz guitarists of the 20th century is generally attributed to his work on his solo albums, such as Virtuoso.

Pass’s playing style was particularly noted for his ability to simultaneously play melody, harmony and bass lines at extremely high tempos. Pass’s single-note playing style is similar to the instrumental stylings of classic bebop and hard bop, drawing comparisons to the tones and timbres of wind instruments used in jazz music, such as the saxophone and trumpet. He also plays other string instruments, such as the piano. Jazz educator Wolf Marshall said Pass’s musical flavorings were “hornlike and on par with his wealth of ideas and immense vocabulary, allowing single-note improvisations to flow like a saxophonist’s stream of consciousness.”

As Pass’s career progressed, he developed an increasingly harmonic approach to improvisation that made extensive use of chord-melody solos, which produced a similar effect to that of a piano. He also employed a variety of different picking techniques such as fingerpicking, hybrid picking and “flat picking”.

Pass’s style was also said to have exhibited a “tougher funky aspect” by incorporating string bends, double stops and partial chords that variously borrow from blues, R&B and swing styles.

Throughout the 1940s, Pass became interested in modern jazz sounds that were emerging from New York City, where he would jam with many quintessential bebop musicians. Pass cited Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum and Coleman Hawkins as influences during this time. Pass was later influenced by the piano styling of Oscar Peterson. Ironically, only three of the various jazz musicians he had cited as influences on his playing were actually guitarists; he cited Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt and Wes Montgomery as instrumental in his development as a musician.