Anatomy of a Murder

A murder title does not require an uninterrupted atmosphere of darkness. Duke Ellington’s orchestra moves between tension, wit and ease through short phrases and sharply differentiated instrumental voices. Before trying to reconstruct a film scene, listen for who speaks and who answers inside the band.

Ellington and Billy Strayhorn created the music for Otto Preminger’s 1959 courtroom drama. No knowledge of the verdict is needed to enter the album. Nor are its titles a script to be decoded: the record offers its own sequence of compact pieces, with contrasts that can work independently of the images.

A large band can make small gestures

Big band does not mean everyone playing loudly at once. An individual voice briefly steps forward, a section replies, or the texture leaves only a few sounds exposed. Compare the outline of the opening number with Flirtibird and notice how the apparent space changes. Even without remembering a whole tune, you can follow a rough edge, a sustained note or a sharply clipped response. Hearing such colours as characters is a useful imaginative approach, but it need not become a claim that every solo represents one particular person in the story.

The soundtrack album is a separate route

Jack Sohmer’s 1999 JazzTimes review explains that film and LP selected different performances. The album therefore should not be treated as an exact running order of what appears on screen. Here, a piece acquires meaning partly through the next piece. Compare the suggestive titles Midnight Indigo and Sunswept Sunday, but check the actual rhythm and texture instead of allowing the words to dictate everything you hear. Continue to Upper and Outest: a succession of compact settings becomes a portrait of the orchestra’s range.

Recognition and later expansion

A Grammy nomination certificate preserved by the Smithsonian documents contemporary recognition, and its catalogue records the Dance Band performance award. The music was being heard as orchestral performance as well as film scoring. This edition follows the original thirteen-track Columbia programme, distinct from the twenty-five-track expansion. Start with that concise sequence before exploring additional material. Repeated themes in alternative performances are illuminating later, but the original album first establishes the different voices and balances that make comparison meaningful.