Nat King Cole - Year by Year - Part 1

Some of these early records are pretty obscure, and yet I think in some of them you can already see the genius of Nat King Cole coming out. There are two fairly good biographies of NKC: "Unforgettable: The Life and Mystique of Nat King Cole" by Leslie Gourse (St. Martin's, 1991), and "Nat King Cole," by Daniel Mark Epstein (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1999). I read them both about eight years ago, and now my memory of them in need of a refresh, but I think the Epstein book is great for the early years. In the early chapters, in places, it reads almost like a novel. Starting about 1950, with Mona Lisa, Epstein seems to lose interest in his subject musically. He does, however, detail his rather messy personal life in his last few years.

Anyway, Any comments on any of these early tracks?


THE SINGLES

1936 ~ Decca Records
(Eddie Cole's Solid Swingers)
Honey Hush/Thunder Stompin' At the Panama/Bedtime (Sleep, Baby, Sleep)

1939 ~ Davis & Schwegler Records
(King Cole's Sepia Swingsters)
There's No Anesthetic for Love
Land of Make Believe
Ta-De-Ah
Riffin' At the Bar-B-Q
I Lost Control of Myself/Let's Get Happy
That "Please Be Mineable" Feeling

1939 ~ Victor Records
(King Cole Trio w/Lionel Hampton Orchestra)
Central Avenue Breakdown/Jack the Bellboy
I Don't Stand A Ghost of A Chance/Dough Re Mi
Blue Because of You/Jivin' With Jarvis
House of Morgan/I'd Be Lost Without You

1940 ~ Decca Records
(King Cole Trio)
Sweet Lorraine/This Side Up
Honeysuckle Rose/Gone With The Draft

1941 ~ Decca Records
(King Cole Trio)
Babs/Early Morning Blues
Scotchin' With The Soda/Slow Down
Hit The Ramp/This'll Make You Laugh
Stop, The Red Light's On/I Like To Riff
Call the Police/Are You Fer It?
Hit That Jive, Jack/That Ain't Right

1941 ~ Varsity Records; Ammor Records
(King Cole Quartet; temporary musicians used)
I Like to Riff/On the Sunny Side Of The Street
Black Spider Stomp/By The River Sainte Marie

 

early stories

Here are a few little snippets from the Epstein bio:

from when he was 5:

At the end of a long day Nat heard his mother warn him, time and again, to stand clear of the pot bellied stove. He also heard his father lecture him on the the almighty power of the Lord.

"The Lord," the Reverend Coles announced at the dinner table, "can do anything you can think of-move the mountains, dry up the seas, anything."

And a little voice piped up from the end of the table. "Oh, can he? Anything?" asked the youngest.

"Anything," said the preacher...

"I bet he can't sit down on that hot stove bare naked," said Nathaniel.

So the child displayed at that early age a wit that could make everyone laugh...


In the book it describes how all the Coles children learned to play piano at their mother's knee. At the age of 4, Nat could already play some songs. He had heard the song "Yes, We Have No Bananas" on the radio at that age, and learned how to play it by himself two handed.

He took lessons, and played organ in his father's church at a young age.

His older brother Eddie was into music, and both of them idolized figures like Duke Ellington and Earl Hines, whom they saw in Chicago's active music scene.

There was a local talent show in late Nov. of 1931, when NKC was about 11, at the huge Regal Theater in Chicago. Earl Hines came and played before the talent show, and then an audience of thousands watched the amateurs, including Nat. The winner of the contest, in these years of the Great Depression, got a big turkey. Nat played brilliantly, and brought home to his proud family the turkey, receiving a hero's welcome.

In 1935 there was a Battle of Rhythm between Earl Hines, King of the Ivories, also known as Gatemouth, and young Nat Cole. In front of a crowd of 5000 at the Savoy Ballroom they dueled it out to more or less a draw.

A few years later he was touring up and down the west coast in cheap bars, coming up the hard way.

So, in 1939, when NKC is making his first recordings, at the age of about 20, he already had been playing music a long time.

(Those records from 1936 are just Nat playing backup for his brother, and so I don't think those really count.)

And the tracks from 1939 aren't great. There's a funny spoken intro to "There's No Anesthetic for Love" when Nat King Cole is called "Dr. Cole," as in a doctor of love, and you can tell they're trying for novelty commercial success, but the results are only so-so.

His first really fine record, in my opinion, is the Decca track Sweet Lorraine, from 1940, which became one of his signature tunes. It's on the fairly good CD, Hit that Jive, Jack. When Nat sings, "Now I've just found joy" while playing the piano in a relaxed and slightly swinging way, it seems like he's finally found his groove...

 

1942-1943

The singles the Nat King Cole trio recorded for Decca are good, and there's a quite a variety songs—uptempo numbers like Babs, Stop the Red Light's On, and Hit that Jive Jack; novelty items (these are the weakest, imho, although sometimes funny) like Call the Police (complete with siren to catch the guy who stole his girl); bluesy numbers like Slow Down and That Ain't Right, and finally instrumentals like Huneysuckle Rose and This Side Up. All in all, I think it makes a nice 16-track album of early tunes.

One of the standouts for me is Stop, the Red Light's On, which seems almost like a prequel to the classic Straighten Up and Fly Right. Here, instead of needing to fly right, the listener is reminded in this fast number about the importance of stopping for the red lights of life. What makes this song really almost rock is the sizzling piano solo in the middle, which reaches a kind of abstract intensity just before the end of the song. I don't know enough about music to describe what NKC is doing in detail, but it's kind of ususual and I think it really works.

The biggest hit was That Ain't Right (which I think hit #1 in the R & B charts in some markets), which is about a woman dragging a man's heart around and abusing his wallet at the same time. I sometimes wish NKC had sung more blues numbers (although he did do some), but this one shows that he can put some feeling into it and create a record that gets airplay.

But, given how obscure these early records are, it's time to move on. The next sides come from disc one of the Mosaic set, which covers from 1942 to the end of 1943, when the Nat King Cole Trio signed with Capitol and finally started to hit it big. Perhaps some people will have comments for the more well known numbers at the end of this disc, where NKC is beginning to buy the first bricks and steel for the Capitol tower.


Mosaic set, disc 1
# Vom, Vim, Veedle
# All for You
# Let's Spring One
# Beautiful Moons Ago
# Pitchin' Up a Boogie
# I'm Lost
# F.S.T. (Fine, Sweet & Tasty) [Instrumental]
# My Lips Remember Your Kisses
# Got a Penny
# Let's Pretend
# Straighten Up and Fly Right
# Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You
# Jumpin' at Capitol [Instrumental]
# If You Can't Smile and Say Yes
# Sweet Lorraine
# Embraceable You
# Embraceable You [Alternate Take]
# It's Only a Paper Moon
# I Just Can't See for Lookin'

 

Hey Benjamin, Great thread, I'll be looking forward to this one for weeks to come. I too have both bear boxes and the Mosaic and I love the Trio stuff...its so Fine, Sweet and Tasty! ha, i love that song title.

Beautiful Moons Ago is one of my faves on the first disc on the Mosaic box, also Let's Pretend, Straighten Up and Fly Right, Gee Baby, Sweet Lorraine, what a roll he was already on, he just takes off and fly's right his whole career.

Anyone know the earliest footage of him performing?

 

Straighten Up and Fly Right

William: It's nice to have you on board. I hope the other NKC fans will join us too. I know there are some out there, although I realize there aren't very many. I agree with you about that title FST--it's a fine, sweet, and tasty number! There is some footage of NKC singing from the very early 40s. Probably about 1943. They are basically the music videos of their era. In a few of them, Nat King Cole is clearly wearing huge amounts of pancake make-up. It seems as if they were almost trying to make him "white." It's very weird. The music is good, though. I think I rented the DVD through netflix, and so if you belong to netflix, you could do a search for NKC and see what comes up.

I just found out that one of the biggest NKC fans on this site is (or was) apileocole (which stands for A Pile O' Cole--funny). But it doesn't appear he's posted in the last month. I hope he comes and joins our discussion. In the meantime, check out his cool NKC website which I just discovered:

http://www.geocities.com/apileocole/index.html

That site has a great discography for the early years. Apparently I've missed quite a few tracks. Most of them I haven't heard, however, so I don't have anything to say about them. Apileocole: where are you?

In the meantime, back to disc 1 of the Mosaic set, which covers 1942-1943. That Mosaic set, by the way, is an amazing 18 cd set which has been out of print for almost a decade. I bought it almost ten years ago for about $300, but now they sometimes sell on ebay for c.$500-$1000. But don't worry, you can get almost all of the best tracks on that set for a small fraction of the cost. The outstanding 4-cd set "Cool Cole," which costs about $40, has almost all of the good tracks from the Mosaic set. Oh, a few may have been left out, but I really think they got most of them. And so, if anyone is thinking about joining us as we discuss the early Nat King Cole Trio, you get do so without the Mosaic set by just getting "Cool Cole."

Back to those songs from the early 40s. I hope others will comment on some of these remarkable early songs. It seems a little strange, but Nat King Cole was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, in part on the basis of the song Straighten Up and Fly Right from 1943. It was thought, and I agree, that "the early stirrings of rock and roll can be found in this song":

http://www.rockhall.com/inductee/nat-king-col

This song was one of the few that Nat King Cole himself wrote. It was based on a sermon he remembered his father telling as a child, one that used an Aesop's like story to tell something about the terrible racism of the era--at least that's how it's sometimes read. What do you think? Here are the lyrics to this famous song, which turned into a giant hit shortly after it was released at the end of 1943:

Straighten Up and Fly Right, written and sung by Nat King Cole

A buzzard took monkey for a ride in the air
The monkey thought that everything was on the square
The buzzard tried to throw the monkey off his back
But the monkey grabbed his neck and said-- Now listen, Jack

Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top.
Ain't no use in divin'
What's the use in jivin'
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top.

The buzzard told the monkey "You're chokin' me
Release your hold and I'll set you free"
The monkey looked the buzzard right dead in the eye and said
"Your story's so touching but it sounds just like a lie!"

Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and stay right
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top.

(instrumental interlude)

Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and stay right
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow---your--top.

Fly right!

 

ps

Don't feel like you have to stick with just talking about these early songs--any and all discussion about anything relating to Nat King Cole is welcome.

 

I'd advocate going chronologically, I think it'll be fun. I'm working my way through the Mosaic box currently (continued thanks, William!) and want to be a part of this thread.

 

I recently picked up some NKC vinyl at goodwill. It is a double album called "A man and his music" on Capitol. It looks like it came from some sort of a music club. It appears to be like a greatest hits. I haven't listened to it yet. Will report later after I listen. They looked in very good shape. Not too worried about cuz it only cost me 99 cents.

 

this does make most sense to me to do it chronologically. though what to do when we hit that mid 50s period when most of that stuff is OOP???....that'll blow. Also, I hope you dont rush this thread along too fast...

 

The footage I think you're refering to is from a bit later, 1949-1951. Indeed, in some of these he is heavily caked in whitening makeup. A few of these telescriptions were done in color and are great to see.

Before these shorts at the end of the decade the trio peformed in a few other "videos", namely "The Frim Fram Sauce" and "I'm A Shy Guy." These most likely date from the middle 40s.

The trio also appeared on the silver screen before this, appearing in Pistol Packing Mama and Here Comes Elmer. Some sources also say that Nat Cole appeared, uncredited, in Citizen Kane, but nothing is confirmed.

 

how I smiled and said yes to NKC

Welcome JKruppa, bigguy, Jordan, and others.

Perhaps slightly off topic, but I'm going to say a little about how I came to be a big Nat King Cole fan. I hope others will chime in with their stories about listening to NKC, even if they're not yet big fans.

The short answer is that in one favorite songs of all time (Barangrill) Joni Mitchell sings:

The guy at the gas pumps
He's got a lot of soul
He sings Merry Christmas for you
Just like Nat King Cole
And he makes up his own tune
Right on the spot
About whitewalls and windshields
And this job he's got
And you want to get moving
And you want to stay still
But lost in the moment
Some longing gets filled
And you even forget to ask
"Hey, Where's Barangrill?"

That recommendation, if you can call it that, had been in the back of my mind since I was a kid. I was born in 1964, and grew up listening to records by the Beatles, Bowie, and Joni Mitchell.

I loved popular music growing up, going to sleep to the sound of the Mighty Met, KMET, when it was still a rock station in LA. But I couldn't always take popular music seriously until in high school I read the book "Come Together: John Lennon in His Time," by Jon Wiener, who was a family friend. I still think it's the most brilliant book ever written on Lennon. I'd loved Lennon's music, but felt that I could never really understand what songs like Strawberry Fields really meant. Come Together decoded these songs and gave them their true personal, political and philosophical meaning for me. It was one of those epiphanies that you have that make the world more rich and strange.

Anyway, fast forward to the late 1990s. I'm in Kansas City with a young family working away on my dissertation in art history. I learned when starting grad school that about 2/3rds of the people who try to write a dissertation never finish, and I was finding out why (basically it's brutally hard work, and then the job prospects aren't that hot). I tried everything to keep myself chained at the computer working on it, like chocolate (which helped so much that it's amazing I'm still more or less skinny), and also music. But I found that most of my musical favorites I couldn't work to, because the lyrics or the voices distracted me too much. But I found that I could usually listen to Nat King Cole on the headphones, tuning out the world, while typing away at the computer on that dissertation.

The long and the short of it is that without Joni Mitchell's recommend I don't think I would have finished the thing, and I don't think I'd be teaching art history today.

Perhaps an example of too much information, but I still would like to hear stories of other people's experiences with Nat King Cole.

Back to the music....

I did run into a funny off-color story about Straighten Up and Fly Right in the Gourse bio today. Basically, as the song became a big hit Lucille Ball was urged to feature it in one of her movies in 1944, about 5 years before I Love Lucy. Nat and the trio played her the song, and at the end she gave her devastating review: "That's the filthiest song I ever heard in my life," she said.

Lucille Ball thought that the Monkey telling the buzzard to straighten up its neck was a sexual reference (!). Needless to say, she didn't use the song.

As Nat drove home from the audition, he was able to laugh about it, even though that was not what the song was about at all. In fact, he said as they were driving back something like, "She could have been right, if you listen carefully," at which they laughed. That attitude took him a long way in music and in life...

 

The Christmas Song Capitol CD has been a seasonal favorite of ours for years. My wife and I think NKC has the best male voice of all. I recently acquired the DCC CD of his greatest hits and the black triangle "After Midnight." Why do I get the feeling that I'm just getting started? benjaminhuf, thanks for the Nat history

 

Nat get his crown

heavyd: Thanks for the post. I think The Christmas song is probably the first NKC song I heard too. I guess it's the first one most of us hear. I should know this, but what are "DCC" and "black triangle"?...

In early 1937, Nat Coles eloped with a beautiful dancer, Nadine Robinson. He was 17 and she was 27. Lacking his parents' permission, he had to lie and say he was 21 on his marriage certificate. Nat left his brother Eddie and his band behind in Chicago after a sharp argument, and Nat and Nadine went to LA to perform in a dance and music show called Shuffle Along. But the show fell apart when somebody in the troupe stole $800 in receipts.

Stranded in Hollywoodland, Nat was determined to make it big, but it was a hard road. First he dropped the s from his last name, not a big change compared to Norma Jean becoming Marilyn Monroe, but it showed he was willing to make changes to make it big.

But it wasn't easy. As Epstein writes in his bio:

"In the late summer and autumn of 1937 he rambled from club to club, from piano to ruined piano, all over greater Los Angeles, playing for three or four dollars, playing for tips, playing for free. The saloon pianos, out of tune or missing keys, were an added challenge. Some say that Nat's style—its spareness, his unusual chord voicings—owes a good deal to his dodging sour keys on crippled pianos...Money was so tight it was often hard to put food on the table. They ate the green avocados from the tree in their backyard." (p.69)

But Nadine believed in him, thought he might play Carnegie Hall one day, and made sure his sometimes threadbare clothes were clean and pressed for each performance. For Nat, who had dreamed since he was a child of being a big band leader, it was a tough beginning.

But in late 1937, when Nat finished one of his performances, the owner of of nightclub called the Swanee, Bob Lewis, offered him a long term gig at $75 a week if he could get a band together. And so the trio of Nat Cole on piano, Oscar Moore on guitar, and Wesley Prince on base was born.

Like landing in LA, Nat's singing, according to legend, happened almost by chance. A drunk patron offered a tip of 15 cents (a nickel per player) for Nat to sing "Sweet Lorraine," and Bob Lewis urged Nat to sing to keep the customer happy. The singing caught on, and Lewis, clever promoter that he was, apparently fashioned a gold or silver cardboard crown for Nat to wear, so that they became the Nat King Cole Trio. The crown was only worn for a few days, but the name stuck.

And where the King label might have seemed an arrogant affectation in others, the modest and shy Cole made it work. As Will Friedwald, the best writer on NKC's music, wrote "Most people characterize Cole as a man with an almost saintly charisma. This quality endeared him to the same audiences who were charmed by the touch of the rogue in Sinatra." But as Friedwald writes, they were also won over by the "ravishing beauty" of his singing and piano work.

But real success took a while. As Nat said, "For seven years we each knocked ourselves out until something happened." In 1943, Nat's manager Carlos Gastel negotiated a deal with newly formed Capitol Records. In their first session, on Nov. 30th, 1943, the Trio recorded four great tracks—Straighten Up and Fly Right, Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You, If You Can't Smile and Say Yes, and the lighting fast jazz instrumental Jumpin' at Capitol. There are some great photos from this session, and I hope someone will scan and post one of them.

Straighten Up was the huge hit, reaching #1 on the R & B and #1 on the Country (!) charts, and even making it to #9 on the Pop charts.

But Gee Baby was hot too—also making it to #1 on R & B and #15 Pop.

Here are some of the lyrics:

Love makes me treat you the way that I do,
Gee baby, ain't I good to you?
There's nothing in this world too good
For a girl so good and true.
Gee baby, ain't I good to you?

Bought you a fur coat for Christmas,
A diamond ring,
A big Cadillac car, and everything.
What makes me treat you the way that I do?
Gee baby, ain't I good to you?...


But it's the way that Nat sings it that makes this song amazing. His phrasing and timing are unusual, and almost keep you, as I think Friedwald wrote, "on the edge of your seat." Notice especially the long pause between the final "gee baby" and the "ain't I good for you." There's a kind of "tension and release" (again Friedwald's phrase) there that someone else singing this song probably wouldn't have gotten. And then there's the quiet wistful mood, not quite melancholy, but far from happy, that also makes this song touching.

 

this is a great story and one that will make me smile whenever i hear this song going forward. none of this ever crossed my mind at all. I wonder what was going on in Lucy's head all these years.....

 

It's pretty interesting how quickly Capitol set about to establish Cole as a singer: of the first 8 songs recorded for the label only one was an instrumental.

The vocals are split pretty evenly between ballads and novelty, two areas at which Cole excelled. In my opinon, he does not get enough credit for the humor in his music - both with the trio and after.

As someone else mentioned, "I'm Lost" is particularly stunning (one of the few Oscar Moore compositions) and Cole would do this one even better nearly 20 years later with George Shearing.

All in all, a great start to the Capitol Era.

 

1944-1945

William: I'm glad you enjoyed that story.

Jordan: You make a good point that seven of the first eight Capitol tracks really focused on Nat as a vocalist.

If anyone has more to say about the earlier tracks, or anything about NKC, please feel free to do so.

Shortages of material for making records during World War II meant that even with big hits the Nat King Cole Trio didn't get much studio time during 1944. Here's the track list for the second disc of the Mosaic set, which covers from Jan 17th, 1944, to May 19th, 1945. After this, production of records by the KC3 would accelerate, but here's the track list for this disc:

# Man I Love [Instrumental]
# Body and Soul [Instrumental]
# Prelude in C Sharp Minor [Instrumental]
# What Is This Thing Called Love [Instrumental]
# After You Get What You Want, You Don't Want It [#]
# Look What You've Done to Me
# Easy Listening Blues [Instrumental]
# I Realize Now
# Please Consider Me [#]
# Bring Another Drink
# I'd Love to Make Love to You [#]
# I'm a Shy Guy
# Katusha [#]
# It Only Happens Once [#]
# You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You
# Don't Blame Me
# I'm in the Mood for Love [#]
# What Can I Say After I Say I'm Sorry
# I'm Thru with Love

 

Will Friedwald

One of the pleasures of being a Nat King Cole fan is that we get to have author Will Friedwald as our guide. Friedwald is a music critic for the New York Sun, and also has written several excellent books on subjects ranging from Warner Bros. cartoons to Sinatra:

http://www.whodat.com/MusicLessons/books/willfriedwald/friedwald.htm

Friedwald has written essays for the Mosaic set, for the Capitol 4 cd boxed set, for some individual cds, as well as writing pretty much all of two large hardback books for the Bear Family Sets. Friedwald has a delightful and insightful writing style that is difficult to describe, so I think I'll just quote a passage from the Mosaic booklet:

"At their greatest, the King Cole Trio distilled the avant-garde technique of a Lester Young or a Bud Powell with the restrained, dignified piety of fellow Capitol recording artist Daffy Duck.

Like Shaw said about Shakespeare being at his most timeless when making the most topically specific references to Elizabethan politics, Bugs Bunny is no less lucid when he name drops the monickers of Wendell Wilkie or Rochester, and similarly, Chandler never seems dated by his remarkably vivid images of a Los Angeles that could not exist before 1935 or after 1955. Cole created music for the ages out of ceaseless devotion to the days headlines: the temporal, the trendy and the faddish. Like Looney Tunes...the trios records constitute an amazing amalgam of topical references, expressions, gas, phrases, both musical and verbal, which still retain their relevance to their moment but have now been codified for all time."

The way he springs Daffy Duck on you in that first sentence makes me chuckle every time I read it.

He also has great commentaries on individual songs:

"It's Only A Paper Moon showcases Cole's most famous vocal and instrumental devices, the beat-hugging expanded contraction, as in 'it's only a paper moon' with a hard 'a', and a brilliantly arranged and executed block chord opening chorus. Generally done in slow-dance time up t this point, Cole forever turned the Arlen-Rose classic into an uptempo vehicle, as in subsequent versions by Sinatra (1950) and Arlen himself."

I don't have any of the musical knowledge of Friedwald, but I think It's Only a Paper Moon is an amazing song when done by NKC. How perfectly it describes how being in love transforms your whole view of the world.

 

a quick Nat question...Besides the trio version of "Makin" Whoopie"...is there another version Nat recorded?

 

No. He did, however, parody the song on his televison show in 1957. Singing alongside Peggy Lee and Julius LaRosa, the threesome sing "Makin' Records" to the tune of "Makin Whoopee."

 

A classic KC3 session. All four are deservedly ranked among the finest sides the group waxed, particularly "The Man I Love" and "Body and Soul." It's too bad that when he was remaking a handful of trio sides for the NKC STORY in 1961 that Capitol didn't let him do an instrumental. It makes sense that they didn't, but I would love to hear how he would've re-played either "Man" or "Body."

Just before he died, about 10 years ago, I asked my grandfather if he'd ever seen Nat or the trio perform. "One time," he said. "About 1945, in San Francisco." He couldn't recall the club, but he said that it was just Nat, sans trio. If true that would be quite interesting, but something tells me time and morphine were playing with gramps' memory. Anyhow, he recalled that Nat sang a little number called "Bring Another Drink." After the set my grandfather - who I think identified with a number of themes in the song - approached Nat and told him he should record that song. Nat informed him that the group had recorded it not too long ago.

I always found it odd that my grandfather remembered this one obscure little number. Hell, he could barely remember my name.

 

Obviously this thread goes beyond introductions, but I've found that a good single-disc intro to Nat King Cole is the Capitol Collector's Series CD from 1990, which covers most of his biggest single hits.

The reason I bring that up is because there's a great story about "Straighten Up and Fly Right" in that CD's booklet. Because of wartime shortages, the original master for that song is made of glass! To be exact, it's a disc of black glass approximately two feet in diameter.

 

1945

DJ: While looking for something else, I saw a copy of "Makin' Whopee" on ebay in case you're in the market:

Nat King Cole Makin Whoopee/This Is My Night To Dream Capitol Promo 78 #1669.

Tim: That is very interesting about that 2 foot black glass master. I didn't know that. Is that the same size as other masters, or was it larger for some reason? I should know this, but what were the regular masters made out of--metal, acetate? You may or may not know that there is actually another, slightly different, version of Straighten Up. It was recorded the same day, and it isn't quite as good, but it's still interesting. It's on a Capitol CD that came out a few years ago--I think it was called Rockin' Boppin and Blues, or something like that.

Speaking of these old songs, how many of you out there have a collection of 78s? And do you ever listen to them? I have a few, including a first pressing of Straighten Up, and several other 78 rpms. I like the heavy feel of these old records, and do like playing them every once in a while. Last night while I playing a few I found on one of the sleeves ("Tomorrow's Hits--Today!") a price list. It seems that a standard album of 3-4 78 rpm records cost about $3 in about 1950. Using the handy-dandy inflation adjuster that you can find here:

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

I found out that that is about $24 today. And so an early album of, say, 3 NKC 78s (like King Cole for Kids) would have cost about $4 a song in today's dollars. In contrast, there are about 290 songs on the two Bear Family sets, and you can get them from CDWolf for about $225 (shipping included), which comes to less than a dollar a song--much less than it would have cost you back in 1950. So, even though these sets are expensive, in a way they're a great deal.

Jordan: I like those instrumentals too. Other standouts on disc two for me include "After You Get What You Want You Don't Want It," "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You," and "What Can I Say After I Say I'm Sorry." Quite a few of these tracks weren't released by Capitol when they were recorded. In part it may have been shortages of material during WW2, but it also may have been that in that racist time they weren't sure they wanted NKC singing "I'd Love to Make Love to You." That's my guess anyway.

It's a complete mystery why they didn't release what may be my favorite track on this disc, "Katusha." This may be the very first of what I think of as NKC's "mystery" songs, which he would record every so often (and sometimes have hits with them, like "Nature Boy"). Katusha is a beautiful and uptempo little song that is a delight to hear.

Anyway, time to move on. But again, feel free to comment on anything about NKC, or any song, even if we've passed it.

The tracks on Disc 3 of the Mosaic set were recorded between May and December of 1945.

Disc 3:
1. Barcarole [#][Instrumental]
2. To a Wild Rose [#][Instrumental]
3. Sweet Georgia Brown [Instrumental]
4. I Tho't You Ought to Know
5. It Only Happens Once
6. (I Call My Papa) Fla-Fa-La-Pa [#]
7. It Is Better to Be by Yourself [#]
8. It Is Better to Be by Yourself
9. Come to Baby, Do
10. Frim Fram Sauce
11. Homeward Bound [#]
12. I'm an Errand Boy for Rhythm
13. This Way Out [Instrumental]
14. I Know That You Know [Instrumental]
15. But She's My Buddy's Chick [Alternate Take][#]
16. But She's My Buddy's Chick [#]
17. Oh, But I Do
18. How Does It Feel
19. You Must Be Blind [#]

 

NKC live

Jordan: I forgot to say that it was fun to hear about your grandpas experience seeing NKC live. Anyone else with any stories of live performances. Since I was born just about the time he died, I never got the chance. I imaging most of us are in the same boat. It would have to have been our parents or grandparents...

 

# Man I Love [Instrumental]
# Body and Soul [Instrumental]
# Prelude in C Sharp Minor [Instrumental]
# What Is This Thing Called Love [Instrumental]
# After You Get What You Want, You Don't Want It [#]
# Look What You've Done to Me
# Easy Listening Blues [Instrumental]
# I Realize Now
# Please Consider Me [#]
# Bring Another Drink
# I'd Love to Make Love to You [#]
# I'm a Shy Guy
# Katusha [#]
# It Only Happens Once [#]
# You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You
# Don't Blame Me
# I'm in the Mood for Love [#]
# What Can I Say After I Say I'm Sorry
# I'm Thru with Love

Man you're going fast, i didnt realize disc 2 came and went and now you're on to disc #3...but back to disc #2. One of the discs i play the most often when company is here. I love the great instrumental tracks that open the disc and then some great laid back Nat vocals that are some of my favorites. Katusha is one of my all time faves, just the lazy swing of the guitar solo and his vocal, this one SWINGS in a most languid way.

I also love Bring Another Drink, Dont Blame Me, I'm Through With Love.

One of the stronger discs in this box set IMO.

Now let me get to disc #3. I hope you slow this thread down as we're going into a 3 day weekend and I'm afraid we'll be on the Bear discs by then....haha