High-Water Mark.

Two things, besides the superb singing, leap out at you in this medley from a 1965 Perry Como Show in which Como and Lena Horne honor the recently-departed Nat Cole.

One, the opening push-in on Perry and Lena at an unmanned piano–as we hear the sounds of a piano–is just brilliantly evocative of the loss.

Two, the way the excerpts of Cole signature songs have been selected so as to take on a whole new layer of meaning–each one feeling repurposed so as to sound addressed to Nat, and the meaning of his life and loss, without a single change in the original lyrics–is again, brilliant.

If anyone out there in cyberland knows the identity of the musical-director-slash-creator-of-special-material for the show who is responsible for this, I’d like to know, too. These eight minutes are certainly among the best eight minutes in all of television musical-variety history.

The video–kindly contributed to YouTube by “NYCguys2007”–appeared there once before, and was yanked, possibly due to copyright issues. So it may be yanked again before long. Look at it now.

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