She Insists – Herbie Nichols

She Insists is a subtly advanced song, full of the quirky melodic and harmonic structures that define the Herbie Nichols style. The tonic chord is C7♭5, giving this song an open-ended sound accentuated by the long notes at the end of the A and C sections. As we interpret it on the lead sheet, the form is AABBC with two 12-measure A sections and two eight-measure B sections. C starts the same as A but goes in a different direction in the 10th measure, extended to a total of 17 measures. The B section is a classic Herbie Nichols bridge, with slinky melodic lines over circle-of-fourths changes.

David Kikoski recorded this song for our Herbie Nichols Centennial Project. His version CLIP is very personal in his own style; some of the melody phrases are a bit different from our lead sheet. As this project consists of songs that have not yet been recorded, we wanted to present the songs as written as much as possible. Our main audio excerpt is a separate recording by pianist Jake Sasfai, a former student of Don Sickler's at Columbia University, playing the head as it appears in our lead sheet which comes directly from Herbie Nichols' manuscript.

David Kikoski plays his own eight-measure intro (not in our clip) based on the chord progression of the last eight bars of the melody. His exuberant solo doesn't stick to the head form, instead largely based on the B section changes.

Herbie Nichols' original manuscript has no chord symbols in the second ending (last two measures) of the B section. These measures are open for interpretation; the same chords as the first ending, E9 and D♭9♭5, work for the melody and these are what Kikoski plays here. Jake Sasfai plays E9 through both measures in his version.