on my Top 25 Most Played on my iPod<\/a>. Nobody like her. NOBODY.<\/p>\nMy parents saw her a couple years ago at the Newport Jazz Festival. She wasn’t a day over 156 years old.<\/p>\n
Also, Mitchell saw her perform and she, at one point, cuddled up on his lap. I adore her.<\/p>\n
My two favorites of hers are not her most famous, perhaps, and I had a hard time finding a clip of her performing them on Youtube. But if you don’t know them, do yourself a favor and check out her renditions of “Beale St. Blues” and “A Woman Wouldn’t Be a Woman”. I’d call them two of the best makeout songs of all time, first of all. And again: there’s just no one like her. Nobody else would make the choices she makes … they are so completely hers<\/i> … and she makes it all work. Through commitment and specificity.<\/p>\n
God, I loved her.<\/p>\n
Clip below (insanely weird. The set, the costume, the fact that there is no closeup of her until more than halfway through … I MISS television like that – it’s like a drug trip or a bad dream) … of her singing “I’m Just an Old-Fashioned Girl”.<\/p>\n
Watch her gesture and her expression when she sings the words “hers and hers”. That’s specific. And the big smile at the end kills me. Because she lets us know that she’s in on the joke. The joke is on us. Lovely.<\/p>\n
We all know her heart belonged to Daddy, but there’s a space in my heart reserved for her.<\/p>\n
Rest in peace, Eartha. You were one of a kind.<\/p>\n
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