You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To (reissue)

Cole Porter wrote songs that understood desire as something stylish and slightly dangerous, and Baker's reading of this one leans into that quality without ever breaking a sweat. The performance has a late-night intimacy to it — not the grand romanticism of a ballroom, but something smaller and more specific, like a kitchen at midnight, like something whispered rather than declared. Baker's trumpet tone here is particularly lush, almost plush, the vibrato barely present, the notes sustained with a patience that feels almost physical. His vocal enters with a kind of casual sincerity, the kind a person uses when they mean something so deeply they no longer feel the need to perform it. The lyric's premise — that warmth, comfort, and homecoming are located in a specific person — becomes in Baker's hands less a romantic fantasy than a straightforward statement of need. The piano comping stays spare, the bass anchors without intruding, and the whole thing feels like something overheard rather than performed. This is music for anticipation more than arrival, for the last few minutes of a journey home when you can already picture the light in the window. It has the quality of relief that hasn't quite happened yet.