Not Comics: Louis Armstrong’s Just One Of Those Things
It kills me that Louis Armstrong did the best version of so many songs, in that I'm never quite certain he's all the way present in the lyrics he sings. There are moments in some of his best performances when it feels like Armstrong slides through a word, or a phrase, or an entire line far more for how it sounds than for what it says. It's surprising, then, how this may be the only A-list singer's version of Cole Porter's song that gets at its conversational qualities, the deep sadness that curls at the edges of speech when a man tries to disassemble something good that's happened to him, something he's certain he does not deserve and cannot under any circumstance maintain. Armstrong pushes through the all-time florid sigh of a line "a trip to the moon on gossamer wings" like he knows he has to back away from it immediately but wants it out there anyway. It's a surprisingly nuanced effect from Armstrong's iconic, kids cartoon of a voice. And who can't relate to wanting to have that kind of moment both ways?
