"Satin Doll"

We remember the night Joe Dobbs wandered into The Flood band room a couple of decades ago and said, “Hey, do you know the song ‘Satin Doll’?”

Boy, was he asking the right guy. Charlie Bowen grew up in a home full of his dad’s jazz records by Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington and Count Basie and his mom’s Harry James and The Mills Brothers.

In BowenWorld, “Satin Doll” was as much a part of the household soundtrack as anything on the radio right then.

Joe didn’t really know any of the tune’s honored status in the jazz world. However, he was tickled by a folksy jazz rendition of it that was recorded live by fiddler Stephane Grappelli and David Grisman in 1981 and he was ready to tackle it himself.

With that, the tune trotted into The Flood repertoire. Click the button below to transport back to 2011 and hear Joe with Flood Lite (Doug Chaffin on bass, Charlie on guitar) sampling the song at the start of a jam session at the Bowen House.

About the Song

In 1953, Duke Ellington interrupted his long-time association with Columbia Records to sign with Capitol, thinking the upstart recording company might more effectively promote his music.

Among the tunes waxed in the first Capitol session that spring was “Satin Doll,” a song Ellington had just written with his favorite collaborator, Billy Strayhorn.

Duke wrote the riff sketch and Strayhorn fleshed it out with harmony and lyrics.

Billy’s lyrics, though, were not were not considered commercially viable, so Duke’s 1953 recording was an instrumental. It was five years later when lyricist Johnny Mercer — a Capitol Records cofounder — wrote sassy new words that resulted in the song we know today.

But Who WAS the Satin Doll?

Strayhorn biographer David Hajdu famously advanced the notion that Billy named the song after his mother, Lillian, saying that the composer’s pet name for his mom was “Satin Doll.”

That’s a charming story, but the Ellington family has a different take on the tale. Duke’s son Mercer wrote in his 1978 memoir that he suspected the mystery woman was his dad’s long-time companion, Beatrice “Evie” Ellis.

Writing in Duke Ellington In Person: An Intimate Memoir, Mercer said Evie continued to believe the song was written for her. “Pop would always be leaving notes in the house addressing her affectionately as ‘Dearest Doll,’ ‘Darling Doll’ and so on.”

Today’s Flood Take on the Tune

“Satin Doll” lately has started visiting the Flood band room again. It was the first tune of the evening at last week’s rehearsal. Listen as Randy, Jack and Charlie start outlining the tune, laying down the rhythm and those cool chords while Danny is still setting up.

You’ll hear Charlie sing the first verse. By the second verse in comes Dan’s beautiful guitar. In a minute, he’s in full gear, and then he’s soloing on two idea-filled choruses that define the entire outing.

Got That Swing

Finally, if you’d like to put a little more swing in your Friday thing, remember that the free Radio Floodango music streaming feature’s gotcha cover.

Click here to tune in the Swingin’ Channel for a randomized playlist of some of The Flood’s jazzier moments over the years.