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Anatomy of a Murder (Music from the Duke Ellington Score) is the original motion picture soundtrack for the 1959 film Anatomy of a Murder.

Background
The jazz score of Anatomy of a Murder was composed by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn and played by Ellington's orchestra. Several of Ellington band's sidemen, including Jimmy Hamilton, Jimmy Johnson, Ray Nance, and Jimmy Woode appear, and Ellington himself plays the character Pie Eye.

Mervyn Cooke, in the History of Film Music, asserts that despite being heard "in bits and pieces" the score "contains some of his most evocative and eloquent music... and beckons with the alluring scent of a femme fatale." Including small pieces by Billy Strayhorn, film historians recognize it "as a landmark—the first significant Hollywood film music by African Americans comprising non-diegetic music, that is, music whose source is not visible or implied by action in the film, like an on-screen band." The score avoids cultural stereotypes which previously characterized jazz scores and "rejected a strict adherence to visuals in ways that presaged the New Wave cinema of the '60s."

The soundtrack album, containing 13 tracks, was released by Columbia Records on May 29, 1959. A CD was released on April 28, 1995, and reissued by Sony in a deluxe edition in 1999.

Reception
Detroit Free Press music critic Mark Stryker concluded: "Though indispensable, I think the score is too sketchy to rank in the top echelon among Ellington-Strayhorn masterpiece suites like Such Sweet Thunder and The Far East Suite, but its most inspired moments are their equal." The score employs a "handful of themes, endlessly recombined and re-orchestrated. Ellington never wrote a melody more seductive than the hip-swaying "Flirtibird", featuring the "irresistibly salacious tremor" by Johnny Hodges on the alto saxophone." A stalking back-beat barely contains the simmering violence of the main title music" The score is heavily dipped in "the scent of the blues and Ellington's orchestra bursts with color." The AllMusic review by Bruce Eder awarded the album 3 stars and called it "a virtuoso jazz score—moody, witty, sexy, and—in its own quiet way—playful".

Ellington's score won three Grammy Awards in 1959, for Best Performance by a Dance Band, Best Musical Composition First Recorded and Released in 1959 and Best Sound Track Album.

Personnel

 * Duke Ellington: piano
 * Cat Anderson, Shorty Baker, Herbie Jones, Clark Terry, Gerald Wilson: trumpet
 * Ray Nance: trumpet, violin
 * Quentin Jackson, Britt Woodman: trombone
 * John Sanders: valve trombone
 * Jimmy Hamilton: clarinet, tenor saxophone
 * Johnny Hodges: alto saxophone
 * Russell Procope: alto saxophone, clarinet
 * Paul Gonsalves: tenor saxophone
 * Harry Carney: baritone saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet
 * Jimmy Woode: bass
 * James Johnson: drums