Satin Doll is a 1953 jazz standard written by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn with lyrics later added by Johnny Mercer. The Duke Ellington Orchestra recorded it as an instrumental during its Capitol Records sessions in 1953, and Ellington opens the tune with a signature piano solo. The composition is in C major and is renowned for its unusual chord changes and its A-A-B-A form, built around a distinctive ii–V–I turnaround. Strayhorn harmonized and orchestrated the melody, and there’s a story that he wrote a lyric about his mother Satin Doll, though Mercer’s lyric is the version that became widely performed. Since then Satin Doll has become a jazz standard, with countless vocal and instrumental recordings by artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Earl Hines, Wes Montgomery, and McCoy Tyner, and it has appeared in Broadway revues like Sophisticated Ladies and in films such as J o Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling and White Hunter, Black Heart.
