“...Armstrong delivers an irresistible vocal and follows it up with some spunky trumpet playing.” - Noah Baerman

AKA It Was Just One of Those Things Rank 74 Words and Music Cole Porter   June Knight and Charles Walters introduced “Just One of Those Things” in the Broadway musical Jubilee, which opened on October 12, 1935, at the Imperial Theatre and ran for 169 performances. Jubilee was a political satire about a deposed king and queen forced to go incognito in their own country.     More on June Knight       More on Charles Walters   Jubilee was one of ten musicals opening that year, some of which included Jumbo, Porgy and Bess, and May Wine. Not one of these made a profit. The Great Depression was partially responsible for the show’s commercial failure, but more to blame were the mixed critical reviews and public reaction to Moss Hart’s script and Cole Porter’s lyrics which were full of inside jokes about their famous friends. This practice was not unusual for either writer. With regard to Porter, Robert Benchley once said that his lyrics often seemed to have been written with “an eye to pleasing perhaps eighteen people.” The end came when Jubilee’s star, Mary Boland, left for Hollywood. Other songs included in Cole Porter’s score were “The Kling-Kling Bird on the Divi-Divi Tree,” “When Love Comes Your Way,” “Me and Marie,” “A Picture of Me Without You,” “Begin the Beguine,” “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” and “Why Shouldn’t I?”     More on Cole Porter   Less than two months after the opening of Jubilee, the recording of “Just One of Those Things” by Richard Himber and His Orchestra (Stuart Allen, vocal) made the record charts, rising to number ten. Peggy Lee’s 1952 rendition (accompanied by The Gordon Jenkins Orchestra) rose to number fourteen.   Chart information used by permission from Joel Whitburn's Pop Memories 1890-1954

More information on this tune... Charles Schwartz Cole Porter: A Biography Da Capo Press; 1st Pbk edition Paperback: 365 pages (Author Schwartz touches on the history of the song in his biography of the songwriter.) See the Reading and Research page for this tune for additional references. - Jeremy Wilson

This section suggests definitive or otherwise significant recordings that will help jazz students get acquainted with “Just One of Those Things.” These recordings have been selected from the Jazz History and CD Recommendations sections.

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Louis Armstrong’s 1957 version of “Just One of Those Things” with Oscar Peterson (Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson) is a delightful place to start when exploring this tune, faithful yet predictably full of spunk. The tune’s compatibility with burning up-tempo performances, meanwhile, is best observed on classic recordings by Bud Powell’s trio (Complete Bud Powell on Verve) and by Max Roach’s quintet with Sonny Rollins (Max Roach Plus Four).

Noah Baerman - Jazz Pianist and Educator

The lyrics to “Just One of Those Things” convey an attitude of cool sophistication. The verse is comic, and there is plenty of Porter’s trademark inner rhyming in the refrain. In fact, this song of lost love is anything but sentimental. The romance is over but that’s no reason to show childish emotion: Why not take the philosophical high road and reduce the whole affair to a dismissive, colloquial phrase?

Porter’s music reflects the same lack of sentiment with its up-tempo pace and intermittent bursts of energy. It begs for a casual delivery. In a review of the Porter musical, High Society, theater critic Charles Isherwood comments, “[Daniel] McDonald does sing pleasantly, but his earnest delivery of “Just One of Those Things” is a lesson in how not to handle a Cole Porter song … By contrast, for a lesson in Porter perfection, there’s the delightful John McMartin … Like Fred Astaire, [James] Stewart and others, McMartin proves with his insouciant, offhand delivery of “I’m Getting Myself Ready for You” and “Say It With Gin” that it’s not vocal prowess but elan that Porter tunes require.” - JW

Musical analysis of “Just One of Those Things”
Original Key	D minor; false key changes to Eb major and Cmajor during the “B” section
Form	A1 – A2 – B – A3
Tonality	“A” is primarily minor; “B” is primarily major
Movement	“A” is generally downward, interspersed with occasional upward leaps. “B” has scale-wise and chromatic movement upward in different ranges of the melody with occasional upward leaps.
Comments     (assumed background)
This is one of the more challenging pieces in the repertoire, with harmonic substitutions that never quite resolve in an expected way until the end. The song starts with a i – ii7(b5) – V5, but instead of resolving to the tonic, it goes to the relative major (to which this song finally resolves at the end), continuing in this key before returning to the original key for the second “A” section. Modulating to the new key of the “B” section, this relative major (F major in the original) turns to parallel minor, becoming the ii7 of the new key, which is a half-step up from the initial tonic key (i.e., Eb in the key of D minor). Eight measures later, the new key lands on its own vii7 (corresponding to the initial tonic, but unrecognizable in this context), or aii7 of the next key built on the seventh of the initial tonic (in the original, C major). Porter follows this with a descending progression that ends on a common-tone diminished chord built on the flatted third scale degree of the key of the moment (Eb in the original). This resolves to a ii7 – V7 in what the ear expects to be F major (relative major of the initial key). Instead, Porter surprises us yet again by going directly back to the initial key of D minor. (Some theorists might regard the C major chord at this point as a substitution for V7 or v.) The three “A” sections are all subtly different; they are identical except for the penultimate phrases: “one of those bells,” followed by “a trip to the moon,” and ending with “it was great fun”. In each case, each italicized word comes at a higher pitch than its predecessor. This all may seem intimidating at first and may be part of the reason that bebop pioneers were the first artists to explore the possibilities of this piece in a jazz context. Nevertheless, careful study of this tune shows that the harmonic progression does, indeed, follow most of the orthodox “rules” of voice leading. The serious jazz player should learn the head thoroughly, analyze the changes for the strong guide-tone lines present, and trust his/her aural sensibilities of what sounds right.
K. J. McElrath - Musicologist for JazzStandards.com

Pianist Garland Wilson (1909-1954) was not a well-known figure in jazz, but his 1936 recording of “Just One of Those Things,” made in London, shows he was well-versed in the Harlem stride piano style as he rips through the tune.

A splendid 1944 recording features the great pianist Teddy Wilson along with Coleman Hawkins (tenor sax), John Kirby (bass) and Sid Catlett on drums---an all-star group that gives Cole Porter’s song a first-class treatment.

Wilson was on hand again for a session by the Benny Goodman Sextet, including vibraphonist Red Norvo, in 1945, and the following year Teddy recorded the number with his own all-star octet.

Chris Tyle - Jazz Musician and Historian

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Garland Wilson 1931-1938 Classic 808 Benny Goodman Slipped Disc, 1945-46 Sony Coleman Hawkins 1944 Classic 842 Teddy Wilson 1946 Classics 997

“Just One of Those Things” was included in these films:

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• Panama Hattie (1942, Lena Horne)
• Night and Day (1945, Ginny Simms)
• Lullaby Of Broadway (1951, Doris Day)
• The Jazz Singer (1953, Peggy Lee)
• Young at Heart (1955, Frank Sinatra)
• Can-Can (1960, Maurice Chevalier)
• At Long Last Love (1975, Burt Reynolds)
• De-Lovely (2004, Diana Krall)

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