Straighten Up and Fly Right

The song announces itself with a melody so immediately cheerful it almost seems to be grinning. Nat King Cole's piano opens things with a bounce that is rhythmically infectious in the most specific sense — it lodges in the body, not just the ear, producing a subtle forward lean in whoever hears it. The arrangement is tight and warm, swing-era sensibility compressed into something that feels like it could have come from a single good afternoon in the studio, spontaneous and assured simultaneously. Cole's voice is one of the most disarming instruments in American music — velvet with an edge, smooth in texture but precise in articulation, capable of turning a song intended to carry a moral lesson into something that feels more like an invitation to a game. The song comes from a specific African American musical vernacular, drawing on the fable tradition to deliver its ethical point — the cool cat who cons his way to disaster, a warning wrapped in entertainment — but what makes it endure is that the music undermines the cautionary tale with its own irresistible energy. You hear the danger coming and still want to follow along. This is music that belongs to a Sunday afternoon in good weather, to a kitchen where someone is cooking, to any moment when lightness is the correct response to the world.