I'm in the Christmas Spirit: Louis Armstrong Sings Two of the Best | Eastern North Carolina Now

Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong
    Even though Louis Armstrong did sing some Christmas tunes, like "Zat You Santa Claus?"; however, I could not find any Christmas videos of a fine enough quality to display in BCN. What I did find was a decent quality video of "Satchmo" singing live "What a Wonderful World", with the Armstrong version one of my favorite ten ballads ever written, performed by anyone, anywhere, and since the song is brimming with the optimism of a new, sacred, divine birth, which is the hallmark of Christmas, I naturally include it in my Christmas spirit series here.

    Since no other decent quality Christmas Carols could be found, I chose another video, sung by Louis Armstrong, but more of an audio representation of the Louis Armstrong's classic "Moon River", written by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer ... one of the greatest ballads of the twentieth century. "Moon River" was specifically written for the film, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and, remarkably, was designed to accentuate iconic actress Aubrey Hepburn's slight vocal range.

    "Moon River", which serves as a fine accompaniment to "What a Wonderful World?", gave a tremendous melodic boost to the 1961 romantic farce, and the song, like actress Hepburn, makes the film memorable, and an iconic classic from that simpler time.

Here below is the great "Satchmo" warbling, as only he can, of the Bob Thiele, George David Weiss classic, "What a wonderful world?": Below.



And now the classic Moon River (Due to the original video being removed due to copyright properties, I will post just the audio): Below.



And since we lost the performance of Louis Armstrong's rendition, I have included this performance by Elton John, which is a fine renditionsung well: Below.



    Publisher's note: If you are really in the Christmas spirit, or just in the need for more, please click here to access all of the holiday spirit in melody and narrative that BCN can harness and offer for this Yuletide Season.
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Comments

( December 1st, 2017 @ 6:32 am )
 
And Audrey did not do a bad job with it either. Old Blue Eyes also made a hit from another one of Johnny's songs.

One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)


beaufortcountynow.com
( November 30th, 2017 @ 7:13 pm )
 
Moon River is one of the great American Songs of all time.

As you probably already know, Savannah's Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics to this Henry Mancini melody.

Your senior class had fabulous taste in music.
( November 30th, 2017 @ 8:11 am )
 
Of all the songs we could chose from, our 1963 CHS graduating class chose Moon River by Andy Williams.

My vote was for a classmate who I had a semi-crush on but I guess it did not gather enough votes.

youtu.be
( November 29th, 2017 @ 10:30 am )
 
I am currently working on a guitar version with my vocals of "Moon River". I have the chording down, even though the song is laced with chords that I have never played before - F7, Bm7, etc., and am now working on the memory of chording and words.

I can read the lyrics and chords and play (which is good for my muscle memory of chords since I can't look down so much at my instrument), but it will take a bit longer to get it just right.

It will be a daunting task to learn how to sing this song in my voice, with the memory of Louis Armstrong's perfect rendition etched in my brain.



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