[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

but Ella could get too airy for me.

that is often the case elsewhere, eg this little cole porter number https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7M5NBC2y8U where she's airy as fuck

but mood indigo is a different kind of tune

since the 1930 version, duke flipped the parts of the instruments (trombone, trumpet/sax, clarinet) to play counter to type, and made extensive use of mutes. and he kept fucking with the arrangements because they played that regularly for decades so had to update.

eg this seems earlier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GohBkHaHap8
and then here's an example from later? don't know exactly when, but you can still see the trombone and the clarinet switching places, the sax pushing low:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x02lJ023tJ4

the link from some posts above, my favorite from 1950, shows a lot of play with mutes. reportedly eve duke aka yvonne lanauze was put in vocals because she could sound like a saxophone. here it is again just for ease of access: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZyVBVFnrm4

anyway, by 1957 ella had quite a past (lol) but the point of this note is not a biographical one: it's just that she sounds like a wind instrument (which she is!), and pushes to the lower part of her register just like the clarinet is asked to do in other arrangements. and it's fucking brilliant, musically. here it is again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOdjqzvE3jw

the key to that tune is not the words, but the horns.