"How High The Moon" LIVE Ella Fitzgerald PREMIUM Transcription

Ella Fitzgerald. Legend. What more can we say?

Before there was rap, hip-hop and freestyling, "scatting" or improvised singing imitating melodic jazz instruments like sax, trumpet, guitar, etc., was a tradition refined throughout jazz history. Louis Armstrong started it, and when Bebop came along, nobody thought it was possible to to do what the likes of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were doing on vocals... until Ella came along and proved them all wrong.

Her incredible intonation, her range, her speed, her musicality, her cleverness and creativity (as she interpolates melodic bits from other songs) are all on display here in this phenomenal 1966 live performance of "How High The Moon". This is similar to the famous "Live In Berlin" version, but it's also quite different as you will see and hear.

As usual, I strove to include as many details of articulation, as it is always more about HOW you sing than WHAT you sing that makes the musical performance special. This time I elected not to include slur and phrase marking as I felt it would look too messy with the lyrics. I did, however, include the melodic references or "quotes" that she drops throughout. Quoting is also a jazz tradition, and can be thought of as the equivalent of "sampling" in today's age, a sort of musical wordplay.