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how h'ghh the moon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR1__k-BxhY

So you think you know this song. you don't know this song.
and you may think you then know the Riff. But you don't know what the Riff can do when  tossed around and the cracks are foreground. not with all the immediacies of these messy messy inbetweens and infrathings - pushmepullyou sinew- esophigial congeal - splaterring excess of MESS in the mess-around. enter the Break. and the reason listening to LIVE recording matters IN PARTICular when institutional/White forces are in control of what is recorded, and marketed and boxes up for radio and pop consuption. Jazz and Blues are not the only genres that suffer this but in parTiCular, blues and jazz singers - especially Black FEMALE singers from 1910 to the 19080s,  which were often made to make smooth, maintain 'the pretty' in composition and content. and a just thousand things. a thousand things that even their Black men didn't have to persist under --- and the intersections of race and patriarchy are tight and complex! when even Little Richard (let alone Ray Charles) forgets to pay hommage to Sister Rosetta Tharpe.....though of course Elvis was the first to take the roll, out of the rock and roll. BUT I DIGRESS.

....ELLA where were you all this time? all those neat neat cadences of chorus verse chorus you recorded... so so beautiful...but all those times the bebop was inserted as cypher for the riff, making congenial for White consumption/space and improv of what jazz is supposed to do. TANGENT. foregrounding why the tonalities that Nina Simone managed to get published in her studio recordings, even the more remarkable - and i mean the edges and ridges on words - not just the content of the lyrics. TANGENT.


Rewind. listen listen. Everthing after 3:45min. you think your done. you think you know the riff or how it can rolls around on the ground. but then it crawls up the wall and the moon is riding you. and at 5:41 - you don't know Ella. you think you know Ella. but you don't, a) because that FORCE was only rarely permitted to persist in live recordings never in the blue note compolations and 'love songs with Louis' christmas selections.  But b), because that isn't a person. it's not even a voice. its many voices made verbiage as voice-ings (and t'ngs) volleying, stretching out in multiplicity and excess of those White forces that usually kept 'Ella' as the sweetness and light. but i digress.

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