Ella Fitzgerald was a 15-year-old street kid when she won a talent contest in 1934 at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Within months she was a star. Over the next six decades, her sublime voice would transform the tragedies of her own life and the troubles of her times into joy. JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS retraces this extraordinary journey.

Two peanut vendors at a rodeo show get in trouble with their boss and hide out on a railroad train heading west. They get jobs as cowboys on a dude ranch, despite the fact that neither of them knows anything about cowboys, horses, or anything else.

The history of New York City’s Apollo Theater in Harlem is given the full treatment.

In 1927 Kansas City Pete Kelly and his jazz band play nightly at a speakeasy. A local gangster starts to move in on them and when their drummer is killed Kelly gives in…