Scorpio
by Duke Ellington
Big Band - Sheet Music

Big band - Difficult

SKU: JL.JLP-8775

By Duke Ellington. By Mary Lou Williams. Edited by Jeffrey Sultanof. Arranged by Mary Lou Williams. Written for Duke Ellington. Ballad. Score and parts. Published by Jazz Lines Publications (JL.JLP-8775).

Mary Lou Williams left Andy Kirk's band in May of 1942, and traveled with her husband, trumpeter Shorty Baker, who was a member of Duke Ellington's band. She composed and arranged quite a few pieces for Ellington, including an arrangement of 'Blue Skies' that was recorded at Carnegie Hall (for some unknown reason Ellington introduced the piece as 'Trumpets No End'). She also composed several other pieces that were not recorded including Aries Mood (Ben Webster feature), Lonely Moments (a version was recorded by Benny Goodman), and this arrangement of Scorpio, written in 1946. Recently this arrangement has been recorded by the Dutch Jazz Orchestra and the Jazz Ambassadors on their tributes to Mary Lou Williams. We are not entirely sure why this arrangement wasn't recorded when it was written, but our guess is that it was a bit 'modern' sounding even for Duke Ellington. Please note that this arrangement is not the movement from The Zodiac Suite that Mary Lou Williams had written at the same time. Around the same time she composed The Zodiac Suite she took some of the motivic material from the Scorpio movement and arranged it for a big band to feature Jimmy Hamilton and Lawrence Brown of the Ellington band. The sound sample is courtesy of the Empire Jazz Orchestra.