Nat King Cole - Complete The Nat King Cole Story (Remastered Edition) '2021

Tracks list

Tracklist:

01. Straighten Up And Fly Right (Remastered 2019)
02. Sweet Lorraine (Remastered 2019)
03. Its Only A Paper Moon (Remastered 2019)
04. (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66! (Remastered 2019)
05. (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons (Remastered 2019)
06. The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You) (Remastered 2019)
07. Nature Boy (Remastered 2019)
08. Lush Life (Remastered 2019)
09. Calypso Blues (Remastered 2019)
10. Mona Lisa (Remastered 2019)
11. Orange Colored Sky (Remastered 2019)
12. Too Young (Remastered 2019)
13. Unforgettable (Remastered 2019)
14. Somewhere Along the Way (Remastered 2019)
15. Walkin My Baby Back Home (Remastered 2019)
16. Pretend (Remastered 2019)
17. Blue Gardenia (Remastered 2019)
18. I Am in Love (Remastered 2019)
19. Answer Me, My Love (Remastered 2019)
20. Smile (Remastered 2019)
21. Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup (Remastered 2019)
22. The Sand and the Sea (Remastered 2019)
23. If I May (Remastered 2019)
24. A Blossom Fell (Remastered 2019)
25. To the Ends of the Earth (Remastered 2019)
26. Night Lights (Remastered 2019)
27. Ballerina (Remastered 2019)
28. Stardust (Remastered 2019)
29. Send for Me (Remastered 2019)
30. St. Louis Blues (Remastered 2019)
31. Looking Back (Remastered 2019)
32. Non Dimenticar (Remastered 2019)
33. Paradise (Remastered 2019)
34. Oh Mary, Dont You Weep (Remastered 2019)
35. Ay, Cosita Linda (Remastered 2019)
36. Wild Is Love (Remastered 2019)

 Biography:For a mild-mannered man whose music was always easy on the ear,
Nat King Cole managed to be a figure of considerable controversy during his 30
years as a professional musician. From the late 40s to the mid-60s, he was a
massively successful pop singer who ranked with such contemporaries as Frank
Sinatra, Perry Como, and Dean Martin. He shared with those peers a career that
encompassed hit records, international touring, radio and television shows, and
appearances in films. But unlike them, he had not emerged from a background as a
band singer in the swing era. Instead, he had spent a decade as a celebrated
jazz pianist, leading his own small group. Oddly, that was one source of
controversy. For some reason, there seem to be more jazz critics than fans of
traditional pop among music journalists, and Coles transition from jazz to pop
during a period when jazz itself was becoming less popular was seen as a
betrayal. At the same time, as a prominent Black entertainer during an era of
tumultuous change in racial relations in the U.S., he sometimes found himself
out of favor with different, warring sides. His efforts at integration, which
included suing hotels that refused to admit him and moving into a previously
all-white neighborhood in Los Angeles, earned the enmity of racists; once, he
was even physically attacked on-stage in Alabama. But Civil Rights activists
sometimes criticized him for not doing enough for the cause.

Such controversies do not obscure his real talent as a performer, however. The
dismay of jazz fans at his abandonment of the genre must be measured against his
accomplishments as a jazz musician. An heir of Earl Hines, whom he studied
closely as a child in Chicago, Cole was an influence on such followers as Oscar
Peterson, and his trio, emerging in the dying days of the swing era, helped lead
the way in small-band jazz. The rage felt by jazz fans as he moved primarily to
pop singing is not unlike the anger folk music fans felt when Bob Dylan turned
to rock in the mid-60s; in both cases, it was all the more acute because fans
felt that one of their leaders -- not just another musician -- was joining the
enemy. Less well-remembered, however, are Coles accomplishments during and after
that transition. His rich, husky voice and careful enunciation, and the warmth,
intimacy, and good humor of his approach to singing, allowed him to succeed with
both ballads and novelties -- so much so that he scored over 100 pop chart
singles and more than two-dozen chart albums over a period of 20 years, enough
to rank him behind only Sinatra as the most successful pop singer of his
generation.

Nat King Cole was born Nathaniel Adams Coles in Montgomery, Alabama, on March
17, 1919. (In his early years of music-making, he dispensed with the s at the
end of his name.) As a Black child born to a poor family in the American South
at the time, he did not have a birth certificate; his March 17 birthday was
recalled because it was also St. Patricks Day. He listed conflicting years of
birth on legal documents during his lifetime; most sources give the year as
1917. (Biographer Daniel Mark Epsteins consulted the 1920 census to determine
that the Coles household had a male infant at that time, and confirmed the birth
year as 1919.) Coles father was a butcher who aspired to the Baptist ministry,
and when Cole was four the family moved to Chicago, where his father eventually
succeeded in becoming a preacher.

Like his older brother Eddie, who became a bass player, Cole showed an early
interest in music. He was taught piano by his mother as a child and later took
lessons. Also like his brother, he turned professional early; by his teens, he
was leading a band called either the Royal Dukes or the Rogues of Rhythm, and he
dropped out of high school at 15 to go into music full-time. The following year,
Eddie, who had been touring with Noble Sissles band, returned to Chicago and the
brothers organized their own sextet. On July 28, 1936, as Eddie Coles
Swingsters, they recorded two singles for Decca Records, Nat King Coles
recording debut. That fall, they were hired to perform in a revival of the
all-Black Broadway musical revue Shuffle Along. Unlike his brother, Cole
remained with the show when it went on tour, in part because his girlfriend,
dancer Nadine Robinson, stayed with it as well. The two married in Michigan on
January 27, 1937, even though Cole was only 17. The tour made its way around the
country, finally closing in Los Angeles in May. Cole and his wife remained
there, living at first with her aunt while Cole sought employment as a musician.
He briefly led a big band, then played solo piano in clubs.

While performing at The Café Century during the summer of 1937, Cole was
approached by the manager of The Swanee Inn, who invited him to put together a
small band to play in the club. With guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Wesley
Prince, the act debuted that fall, drawing upon the childrens nursery rhyme (Old
King Cole was a merry old soul...) for the name the King Cole Swingsters, later
simply the King Cole Trio. The group gradually built up a following, with Cole
emerging as a singer as well as a pianist. By September 1938, they had begun
making radio transcriptions not originally intended for commercial release,
though they have since been issued. In 1939 and 1940, they made occasional
recordings for small labels and did radio work while expanding their live
performances to include appearances across the country. In late 1940 they signed
with Decca. Their 1941 recording of Coles composition That Aint Right hit number
one on Billboards Harlem Hit Parade (i.e., R&B) chart on January 30, 1943, Coles
first successful record. By that point, Prince had left the group to work for
the war effort and was replaced by Johnny Miller.

The King Cole Trios contract with Decca expired before That Aint Right became a
hit. Their next single, All for You, was recorded for the tiny Excelsior label
in October 1942. After its initial release, it was purchased by Capitol Records
and reissued. On November 20, 1943, it became the groups second number one hit
on the Harlem Hit Parade. It also crossed over to the pop chart. With that
accomplishment, Capitol signed Cole directly. The trios first Capitol session
produced both the Cole composition Straighten Up and Fly Right, which topped the
Black chart on April 29, 1944, and stayed there for ten weeks; it spent six
weeks at the top of the folk (i.e., country) chart, and reached the Top Ten of
the pop chart. Gee Baby, Aint I Good to You topped the Black chart on October 21
and also crossed over to the pop chart.

The trio placed another four titles in the Black chart during 1944, and Capitol
released their debut album, The King Cole Trio that fall. The collection of four
78-rpm discs contained eight tracks, only three of them featuring Cole vocals.
When Billboard instituted its first album chart on March 24, 1945, The King Cole
Trio was ranked at number one, a position it held for 12 weeks. At the same
time, big-band swing music was declining in popularity, and many jazz fans were
beginning to turn to the emerging style of bebop, a development that, whatever
its artistic significance, spelled the end of jazz as a broadly popular style of
music.

The King Cole Trio -- and particularly the singer/pianist then known as King
Cole -- on the other hand, were going in exactly the opposite direction, as
their success on records, and at clubs and theaters around the country, led to
appearances in films and on radio. After numerous guest-star stints on Bing
Crosbys Kraft Music Hall radio series, the trio, along with pianist Eddy Duchin,
were hired to host the shows summer replacement program for 13 weeks. During
that run, on August 17, The King Cole Trio, Vol. 2, another set of four 78s, hit
number one. Over the next five days, the trio recorded two songs that would add
to their pop success. Mel Tormé and Robert Wells The Christmas Song (Merry
Christmas to You) (better known by its opening line, Chestnuts roasting on an
open fire), recorded August 19, was Coles first disc to feature strings. (I Love
You) For Sentimental Reasons, though it only featured the trio, demonstrated
that Cole was more than capable of handling a straight romantic ballad, not just
the uptempo novelties with which he and the group had succeeded up until this
point.

(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons became Coles first number one pop single on
December 28, 1946; The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You) peaked at number
three, going on to become a holiday perennial and million seller. While these
hits were developing, the trio went from its summer replacement berth to its own
network radio series, King Cole Trio Time, a 15-minute Saturday afternoon
program that debuted on October 19, 1946, and ran until April 1948. The groups
recording schedule during the first half of 1947 was relatively light, but the
pace picked up considerably in anticipation of the musicians strike called for
January 1, 1948. On August 22, 1947, with an orchestral backing, Cole recorded
Nature Boy, an unusual philosophical ballad. Released March 29, 1948 and
credited to King Cole, it hit number one for the first of eight weeks on May 8,
becoming a gold record.

Oscar Moore, the trios original guitarist, left the group in October 1947 after
ten years and was replaced by Irving Ashby. In March 1948, Cole divorced his
wife and married singer Marie Ellington. Among the couples children was Natalie
Cole, who became a singer herself. Bass player Johnny Miller quit the trio in
August 1948 and was replaced by Joe Comfort. In February 1949, Cole added
percussionist Jack Costanzo to the group, which was thereafter billed as Nat
King Cole & the Trio. As of the spring of 1950, Coles recordings were being
credited simply to Nat King Cole. On July 8 of that year, his recording of the
wistful movie theme Mona Lisa, featuring a string chart arranged by Nelson
Riddle, became Coles third number one pop hit and gold record.

That September, he traveled to Europe for his first international tour,
beginning a pattern that would find him giving concerts almost continually in a
combination of top nightclubs in major cities and concert halls around the U.S.,
with occasional trips to Europe, the Far East, and Latin America, and extended
stays at Las Vegas casinos. In these appearances, he stood for most of the show,
only occasional sitting down to play a number or two at the piano. Ashby and
Comfort left the group in 1951, and an announcement was made that the trio
officially dissolved, but that simply meant that Cole would be billed as a solo
act. In practice, he continued to carry a guitarist, John Collins, and a
bassist, Charles Harris, along with Costanzo (until he left in 1953 and was
replaced by drummer Lee Young), while often augmenting them with an orchestra.

Penthouse SerenadeCole scored his fourth number one pop hit and gold record with
Too Young, which topped the charts on June 23, 1951. His recording of
Unforgettable peaked at number 12 on February 2, 1952, but it went on to become
one of his better-remembered recordings; in 1991, a version of the song by
Natalie Cole with the Nat King Cole recording dubbed onto it became a gold
record and won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year. With his 1952 LP
Penthouse Serenade, Cole showed that he was not yet ready to dispense with his
jazz chops entirely. The disc was an instrumental collection that spent one week
at number ten in the album chart in October. Meanwhile, he was also looking for
new challenges, taking on small acting roles in the films The Blue Gardenia and
Small Town Girl, and the television drama Song for a Banjo in 1953. His 1953
album Nat King Cole Sings for Two in Love, arranged and conducted by Nelson
Riddle, was a Top Ten hit in early 1954 that pre-dated similar concept albums by
Frank Sinatra.

After MidnightAlthough Cole did not score a number one hit in 1953 (Pretend
peaked at number two), his seven chart entries were enough to rank him among the
ten most successful singles artists of the year. His five chart singles in 1954,
among them the gold-selling Top Ten hit Answer Me, My Love, allowed him to
repeat this ranking the following year, and he did the same thing in 1955 with
another eight chart entries, including the Top Ten hits Darling Je Vous Aime
Beaucoup, A Blossom Fell, and If I May. Nine more chart entries allowed him to
remain among the most successful singles artists in 1956, even though none of
them reached the Top Ten, and he maintained his rank for the fifth straight year
in 1957, reaching the Top Ten (and the top of the R&B chart) with Send for Me.
Though he managed one more Top Ten hit, Looking Back, in 1958, the rise of rock
& roll diminished his success on the singles chart. Meanwhile, he returned to a
jazz approach on his 1957 LP After Midnight, which saw his backup group
collaborate with jazz musicians Harry Sweets Edison, Stuff Smith, Willie Smith,
and Juan Tizol. It was a modest commercial success, quickly followed by the
ballad album Love Is the Thing, arranged and conducted by Gordon Jenkins, which
hit number one for the first of eight weeks on May 27, 1957, and was eventually
certified platinum.

Nat King Cole Shows, Vol. 1Meanwhile, in the fall of 1956, Cole became the first
Black host of a network television series when The Nat King Cole Show debuted as
a 15-minute weekly program on November 5. The show was expanded to a half-hour
in July 1957 and ran until December of that year, though it never attracted a
national sponsor that might have made it an ongoing success. Cole attributed
advertisers reticence to racism. He returned to his acting career during 1957,
appearing in Istanbul and China Gate, and got his most substantial role in 1958
playing blues musician W.C. Handy in a film biography, St. Louis Blues. His last
acting role was in Night of the Quarter Moon in 1959. In 1960, he turned his
attention to the theater, putting together a musical revue intended for
Broadway. The songs were by Dotty Wayne and Ray Rasch, and the album Cole made
of them, Wild Is Love, became his first Top Ten LP in three years. The
corresponding stage show, Im with You, was not as successful, opening what was
intended to be a pre-Broadway tour in Denver on October 17, 1960, but closing in
Detroit on November 26. Cole, however, salvaged the concept of the show for a
stage production he called Sights and Sounds: The Merry World of Nat King Cole,
featuring a group of dancers and singers, with whom he toured regularly from
1961 to 1964.

Cole returned to the Top Ten of the singles chart for the first time in four
years with the country-tinged Ramblin Rose in 1962; his album of the same name
also reached the Top Ten and was eventually was certified platinum. Those
Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer became his last Top Ten hit in the summer of
1963. In December 1964, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Two months later, he
died of it at the age of 45.

After his death, Cole continued to appeal to the two almost mutually exclusive
audiences who had appreciated him during his life. Jazz fans continued to
treasure his recordings of the 1930s and 40s and to dismiss the non-jazz
recordings he had made later. (In 1994, German discographer Klaus Teubig
compiled Straighten Up and Fly Right: A Chronology and Discography of Nat King
Cole, which pointedly cut off in the early 50s.) Pop fans clamored for reissues
of Coles 50s and 60s music, awarding gold record status to compilations that
Capitol continued to assemble, without worrying much about the singers talent as
a piano player. (And, as his recordings fell into the public domain in Europe,
where there is a 50-year copyright limit, a spate of low-quality reissues
flooded the market.) But the ongoing debate was only a testament to Coles
ongoing attraction for music lovers, which, in the decades following his
untimely end, showed no signs of abating. ~ William Ruhlmann

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