The Blues Brothers

Minnie The Moocher

Anyone who has seen the Blues Brothers movie will immediately remember the scene towards the end where John Candy and the Chicago police force are closing in on Jake and Elwood while they're about to take the stage for a concert at the Palace Ballroom. Cab Calloway does his best to keep the unruly crowd happy by breaking out his classic tune 'Minnie the Moocher.'

This is an adaptation that combines elements of the Blues Brothers chart (including Alan 'Mr. Fabulous' Rubin's trumpet licks) with some features of Cab's earlier recordings. The call and response part has been written in and cued in all the parts so that the band can either play or shout the answers. Of course, we do encourage you to get the audience involved in the call and response part. And, the vocal part has been cued in trombone 1 in the event that you'd like to play this as an instrumental. The only tricky part of this arrangement is that it goes into a double time feel towards the end. The drummer doubles the time 2 measures before the rest of the band does. There are no saxophone doubles.