James Moody, I met you in New York City when you moved there from Vegas
You were already a world-famous jazz saxophonist
One of your landmarks was your solo on “I’m in the Mood for Love”
Eddie Jefferson wrote lyrics to it and called it “Moody’s Mood for Love”
It begins with, “There I go, there I go, there I go . . .”

I heard you live several times in NYC
On one of your gigs, you brought up Janis Siegel to sing “Moody’s Mood”
You jumped in to sing falsetto on the “girl’s” chorus
The audience laughed
You also did a scat call-and-response with the audience
The audience was with you until your last lengthy, virtually un-memorizable, scat call
The audience laughed.

Once you were in Lexington, KY, for a jazz festival at the Opera House
You showed me a picture of someone you said was your girlfriend, but you covered up everything except the face
I kind of smiled and nodded
You uncovered the rest of the photo to reveal that it was Liberace
I laughed.

When you first moved to New York, you were looking for work
I hired you to play flute on a jingle session
It was for a feminine hygiene product
I was told not to use your name
I wasn’t sure what that meant
I had never heard of jingles showing musician credits
Anyway, it never ran, because the company decided not to market the product
I listen to the track sometimes, and I laugh.

There you go,
There you go,
There you go . . .