How High the Moon - Sex Stories

How High the Moon

“How high…” sings Lynn. “How hi-igh… How high the moo-oo-oon!” With echoes of Sarah Vaughan, she stretches the final word beyond its normal constraints, modulating the tone, while her fingers follow a little behind on the piano, finally resolving themselves in improvisation when she senses there is little more to be squeezed from one word. The audience politely applauds as they recognise the change. She smiles, although she is aware that she no longer resembles the slender Sarah Vaughan who first sang those words in the 1950s, but the older, fuller one of the 1970s who, unlike Lynn, had achieved enough fame that she could afford to ‘sell out’. Selling out isn’t an option for Lynn. Neither her muse nor her record company, small though it is, would allow that. And her loyal following, scaled as modestly as Advanced Jazz Records, wouldn’t contemplate it either. Tomasz, her drummer, nods with a smile as he takes Lynn’s cue to add his own improvised colour to the steady syncopated rhythm of the black notes on the keyboard. Paul strums the double bass with fingers as black as Lynn’s, his eyes closed and the grin on his face revealing the quiet ecstasy that always accompanies his playing. What an international trio they are: reflecting the cosmopolitan nature of Lynn’s adopted home of Manhattan. Tomasz from Poland, Paul from Alabama and Lynn from Peckham, a London suburb that seems bizarrely exotic set against the yellow taxis and steaming subways of the insomniac city. The ...

... passage leads naturally to one of Lynn’s own compositions, but not one to which she is courageous enough to add lyrics. She knows she is no wordsmith, but she relishes the opportunity to scat over her own scales. The audience nods appreciatively, but not so much as when, a bass and drum solo later, Lynn lets the touch of the orient in her own Cairo Taxi Cab flow into the thundering allure of Duke Ellington’s Caravan . The more tutored ears in the Village Vanguard applaud wildly, joined by the rest when she at last sings: “Ni-ight and stars above that shine so bri-ight: the mystery of their fading li-ight that shines upon our caravan…” The model for her rendition is not the sassy one, but Ella Fitzgerald who surely once sang, as did Sarah Vaughan, in this very historic venue. Much as Lynn loves the American songbook and its great stars, she is a modern artist. Her performances have a character and flavour that is her own, and good enough that she can earn a booking here in Greenwich Village, to which she, in true Ellington style, has taken the A train. But respected as she is, it is a modest audience that shelter in the basement club away from the chill of a New York autumn (or ‘fall’ as she is learning to call it). At last, Lynn senses that the variations she can squeeze from Duke Ellington’s masterpiece have reached their term and she lets the number end with an ironic piano roll. The audience applauds and, twenty minutes into the set, it is time for Lynn to address the shadowy ...