Just getting into jazz, there are many things I don't understand. For example, what are "Standards," who sets the standards for performance, and how the same song played by different people sounds completely different.

"Standards" refer to those old songs, relative to the original compositions by performers themselves. Broadly speaking, any old song can be called a standard.

Narrowly speaking, these songs are best suited for "playing." Many standards have become famous because jazz musicians have recorded them extensively, but there are also many that have been rarely touched.

Old jazz always aimed for a bit of "playing other people's songs": which songs are fun to play, which others would enjoy listening to, and what new playing styles are emerging. Murakami mentioned "A Foggy Day," a classic by George Gershwin, in Charles Mingus' work.

He brought up another question at Art Blakey's: "Who sets the standard for performance"—the standard, one could say, is the songs themselves: how a song is written, its chords, arrangement, freedom, and so on.

It's said that Ella Fitzgerald discovered she didn't know how to sing many songs when she recorded the "Gershwin Songbook," but it definitely wasn't "A Foggy Day"—she had recorded this song several times, and her own version was excellent. As for her duet with Louis Armstrong, it was also excellent, their voices immediately bringing to mind "What a Wonderful World."

Perhaps Louis Armstrong sang too long, like two people taking turns singing, then sticking together deliberately. Ella started her solo before Louis Armstrong's bridge solo had finished, and then the two of them sang together after the solo, which was great.

So, at the beginning, pretending not to know each other and then developing a passionate love story fits the storyline of "A Foggy Day" very well.

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