C minor · Camelot 5A · 113 BPM
C'est si bon
by Louis Armstrong
- 113
- BPM
- C minor
- Key
- 5A
- Camelot
- 63
- Danceability
- 75
- Acousticness
In February 1948, Louis Armstrong was in the south of France, attending the first Nice Jazz Festival. On February 28, he was present at the Hotel Negresco during a jam session called La Nuit de Nice, where the singer Suzy Delair performed "C'est si bon", a new French number composed the previous summer by Henri Betti with lyrics by André Hornez. Armstrong loved the song on the spot.
The tune had already made a winding journey to reach him. Betti had jotted down its first nine notes outside a lingerie shop on the avenue de la Victoire in Nice, then finished the melody in under ten minutes at his home on the rue des Ponchettes. Yves Montand declined to sing it at the Théâtre de l'Étoile in October 1947, judging it wrong for his style, so Betti sang it himself in the evenings at a Nice restaurant while waiting for a performer to be found. Jacques Hélian's orchestra recorded it for the radio with vocalist Jean Marco, and the Étienne Sisters later turned it into a hit with Raymond Legrand.
Armstrong waited two years before committing it to wax. On June 26, 1950, he cut the American version, with English lyrics by Jerry Seelen, alongside Sy Oliver and his Orchestra in New York City. The disc was a worldwide success, and international singers took up the song in numbers.
C'est si bon runs at 113 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.12 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 531 ms. It is in C minor, Camelot 5A, which shares its notes with Eb major and mixes cleanly with F minor and G minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.