June Christy: Something Cool

In 1953, no longer the '40s flychick scatting "How High the Moon" with Stan Kenton, June Christy turned to dramatic readings of saloon songs. Bill Barnes's "Something Cool" is incisive storytelling, as June enacts the first-person narrative of a self-deluding barfly. Think Blanche DuBois as lounge lizard. Ordinarily, she would decline to drink with a stranger, but relents because she's "so terribly far from home." Citing past triumphsa house with countless rooms, 15 different beaus, off to Paris in the fallthis gal fools herself more than she impresses the guy who stops to buy her something cool. A remarkable 4-minute drama.