Blame It On The Boogie
Jazz Ensemble - Digital Sheet Music

Jazz Ensemble Jazz Ensemble - Level 3 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.555276

Composed by David Jackson-Rich, Elmar Krohn, Hans Kampschroer, Michael Jackson-Clark, and Thomas Meyer. Arranged by Nathaniel Frisque. Jazz,Pop. Score and parts. 42 pages. Nathaniel Frisque #164885. Published by Nathaniel Frisque (A0.555276).

I arranged this piece at the request of my friends in the 2020-2021 Viking Jazz Ensemble at Wisconsin Lutheran High School. We hoped to do "Blame it on the Boogie" for that year's Prism concert, and they had asked my director to find an arrangement. He found one, but it was out of print. We were already playing an arrangement I did of "Don't Start Now" by Dua Lipa, so my friends turned to me and said, "You can do one more, right?" A year later, the 2021-2022 Jazz Ensemble performed this in front of 4 sold-out Prism concerts. This arrangement won first place in the WSMA 2022 Student Composition Project Arrangement Category- High School Division. This arrangement starts with the original melody and harmonies as presented on the original recording. The intro features bass and bari sax, the verse melody is passed to the saxophones, and the chorus is in the hands of the trumpets. I know. Scary. The second verse takes a turn, changing keys to the relative minor and changing feels into a jazz-latin groove. The melody starts in the trumpets and moves to the saxophones, while everyone else is comping on a montuno-based rhythm. The second chorus serves as a "Breakdown" section and transitions the piece into the solo section. The solo section is heavily inspired by the steel pan music of Trinidad and Tobago. The transition from the chorus into the solo section is stolen from "Summersong," a piece of steel pan literature. The chord progression is ripped from the soca tune "Pan in A Minor" by Lord Kitchener. The backgrounds are traditional "strum" rhythms from the genre. The transition out of the solo section is a chromatic line also commonly used in steel pan music, especially pieces performed for the annual steel pan competition Panorama. The final chorus is presented in the same style and key as the original recording. Some slight changes are made in the backgrounds, and the entire band brings back the idea from the introduction to bring the piece to an end. This piece exists for one reason only: for you and the audience to have fun.