What a Little Moonlight Can Do, Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra, July 2, 1935
Song by Harry Woods
Roy Eldridge, trumpet
Benny Goodman, clarinet
Ben Webster, tenor sax
Teddy Wilson, piano
John Truehart, guitar
John Kirby, bass
Cozy Cole, drums
Billie Holiday, vocal
"This one was taken at a cracking pace, as quick a beat as Billie ever sang over, but of course Goodman and Billie made it sound easy, while the rhythm section did the work." (Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon, Donald Clarke)
The form here is somewhat unusual. Instead of the standard AABA form each 32 bar chorus consists of 4 sections in the ABAB sequence, meaning the first four bars (A) are repeated as the third four bars and the second four bars (B) repeat as the final four.
Piano introduction 0 – 2
First ABAB chorus 3 – 57
Benny Goodman opens accompanied by the rhythm section of Cozy Cole on drums, Teddy Wilson on piano, and John Kirby’s bass. Listen to all of them, and also feel the uptempo beat—fast, fun.
The second A (at 32) begins with a little clarinet wail and picks up the tempo a bit - typical in jazz recordings. You can listen to this accomplished chorus as if you were watching a good dancer, proud of his work, and happy to show it off. The feeling is one of exuberance and skill, and also of belonging and contributing to a group effort.
Interval 58 - 59
They take a few bars to set up the girl singer...
Second ABAB chorus 1:00 – 1:58
Here is Billie Holiday's vocal. Listen to the quality of the voice. It is slightly slurred, relaxed, purring. She really makes a lot of the rhymes in the language, but makes more of the sounds themselves by expressively taking those ooo sounds in her own direction. Listen also for Teddy Wilson’s excellent comping in the background, filling in between the lines, as it were, with some pretty fancy fingering. If Goodman sounded exuberant in his second chorus, Billie sounds genuinely thrilled pleased as punch to be right here doing this right now.
A
Ooh, ooh, ooh! What a little moonlight can do ooh oohOoh, ooh, ooh! What a little moonlight can do to you!
B
You’re in love. Your heart's a-fluttering all day longYou only stutter cause your poor tongue
Just will not utter the words, "I love you."
A
Ooh, ooh, ooh! What a little moonlight can do ooh oohWait a while till a little moonbeam comes peepin' through
B
You’ll get bold, you can't resist himAnd all you'll say when you have kissed him is
"Ooh, ooh, ooh! What a little moonlight can do!"
Singers often exploit the purely physical dimension of language, where semantics gets left in the dust, as Billie Holiday does here with her ooh, ooh, oohs. (These come, of course, from the composer, who also composed the hit, "When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bop Bop Boppin' Along.") It is a truism to note that a singer’s instrument is her voice; here the singer shows how true that truism is.
Notice how close she stays to the same note - the music is conjunct rather than disjunct - making the song expressive in her own way, taking advantage of what for other singers might be a disadvantage, that narrow range she had to work with.
Third ABAB chorus 1:59 -
Ben Webster, one of the most accomplished and inventive practitioners of the tenor sax. takes the first AB. His solo is from 1:59 - 2: 29. Let's here what Gunther Schuller says about him:
He was “one of the greatest and most consistent, invincible artists of jazz. …Webster was a storyteller who spoke through his horn. The inner poetry of his playing, swelling with imagery and meaning, was enriched by a constantly growing vocabulary of impressions and expressions. (Schuller, 578, 586)
Now you can look back, or, listen back, to the solos of Goodman, Wilson, Holiday and Webster. Each stands out in its own way. Each also gets configured by its relation to the other, so that the performers are responding to the song - interpreting it as they play it - and to each other. The sense of communication is vividly felt in a light, joyous sort of way here.
