NAT "KING" COLE - Year by Year - Part 2

The suits at the Tower should ask Steve and Kevin to do the DSD remastering for the SACD!

 

Steve,

Did you get your hands on the UK pressing yet? What sort of difference might we be talking about here?

Thanks.

 

Steve,

I may have asked about this many, many months ago, but don't really recall your answer.

When you were working with the 3-track tapes for Love is the Thing, did any of the tape boxes or paperwork (if you encountered any) make mention of a tune that was recorded but not included in the album? Capitol files indicate that Nat and Jenkins recorded "I Was a Little too Lonely", but it couldn't be located by Bear Family and was presumably scrapped.

Note: Nat had already done this tune a few months earlier for the After Midnight sessions. This, apparently, was a unique recording done at those December 1956 sessions.

Sorry if it was asked and answered, your honor. The memory is not what it was.

 

As long as we're fantasizing about this anyway, how about a Hoffmanized SACD collection of all of Nat's Gordon Jenkins recordings at Capitol?!? That would be a thrill and a half for this Jenkins fan!

 

And while you're here, Steve. As you already know, it sure would be nice if you could do some more of the NKC catalog. The half-dozen released titles you've done just isn't nearly enough.

 

For a second there, I thought you were going to say Just One of Those Things, since I am now writing about it. I am afraid that comments so far on Love is The Thing are scattered in the Part 1 of this thread. DJ had a post on page 47 admiring the DCC version, Clark had a great anecdote about Stardust on the same page, page 49 had comments on the music from apileocole, and I had 2 or 3 short posts on page 42. Other brief comments are all over the thread.

I would love to hear more comments on the album, favorite songs and impressions of the sound.

Such as Ian Bradley in Bury, Lancashire, United Kingdom , Ian, have you heard or collected the various UK versions? Do you also have the DCC?

 

Hi, Dale. Thanks for the mention! I started collecting Nat with the 1987 Alan Dell produced digital releases on vinyl. I bought Love is the Thing on CD when it was first issued - believing it was an upgrade and I junked all my Nat vinyl from this source! It's only since joining this forum twelve months ago my audio education proper has begun and I realise what I have been missing.

Whilst I've collected original gray label Sinatra pressings, I haven't been able to (afford) to go down that route with Nat. I DID, however, pick up the two DCC Jenkins albums. What can you say? On Steve's mastering, the strings spread across the sound stage like a wave breaking across golden sand. And Nat's voice is just velvet. It's an awesome listening experience.

Whilst people rave (rightly) about Stardust, it's the opening track which gained real currency here in the UK, I think. I always remember my Dad telling me he would hear that song being played over and over again by a lad in the yard next door. You really can imagine a teenager taking the idea that falling in love should be forever as his credo - Nat's record shaping his world view, almost! You would go out into the world expecting to find suchj a giurl and thinking that is what love should be.Such is the definitive nature of this particular recording and such is Nat's stature as an artist. It's given to very few singers to achieve that level of importance - that their work becomes part of the listener's DNA.

Incoherent ramblings but when I think about this album, it's that title track and the story of a boy listening in a sun bleached yard hoping for that sort of love.

 

Yes Dale is right, I wrote this on 8-13-08...and its in part 1, but as we've got Steve focused here now, but didn't then, and many members see him posting in this thread here and now...maybe we can get some new drive by posting for this much loved title in the DCC cannon and more as we're now in album territory many will have....


haha, i wrote in May I would write about this and then as per usual this thread takes on a life of its own and i've been "waiting" for that album to begin what with all the distractions forgetting we were on it....so not to take away from disc 5 and Just One of Those Things, but....

this is an album that I didnt really know when I got the Bear Family box set. Oh I had a CDR of the DCC thing hoping one day to own my own copy....and I have my parents old vinyl of this in my basement now, but the time I'd spent with it in my early Nat phase didn't amount to much. Like some of Sinatra's weeper albums, this one didn't swing, wasn't fun and I found it a dud as I absorbed the livelier, jazzier stuff....

But over time, basically thanks to this thread...I've gone back over a lot of his material and the ballads have taken on a life of their own for me and this album has become an absolute fave. Gordon Jenkins created some masterfully understated arrangements and his whispers, purrs, and vocal delivery is so relaxing, so perfect. I tend to love the Billy May swinging stuff, but Jenkins did such great lushness with Nat and as my Nat palate grows this stuff is now in my faves pile.

I used to use this record to fall asleep to, but now it doesnt put me to sleep, i'm hooked on every nuance and its become a very active listen where once it was very passive listen.

the track "Stardust" has no peer in his cannon really. its a perfect track and for me his signature song, but the opener When I Fall in Love into Stardust is sublime...though for me, this album also ends with Stardust as on the DCC version, and having that track twice isn't even really enough IMO, even the tracks tagged on from Where Did Everyone Go? have become part of the listen, though they dont belong, they do seem to fit well together.....still the arrangement on Stardust is just other worldly really, but it works perfectly and is nice after the bonus tracks cause it closes out this listen back with that session.

the DCC gold track listing...cause this is the version I've grown to love...
Track Listings
1. When I Fall In Love
2. Stardust
3. Stay As Sweet As You Are
4. Where Can I Go Without You?
5. Maybe It's Because I Love You Too Much
6. Love Letters
7. Ain't Misbehavin'
8. I Thought About Marie
9. At Last
10. It's All In The Game
11. When Sunny Gets Blue
12. Love Is The Game

Bonus tracks on DCC gold cd from "Where Did Everybody Go"
13. Someone To Tell It To
14. The End Of A Love Affair
15. If Love Ain't There
and a lovely bonus too!

 

Steve, it sounds good to these ears just the way it is.

 

If i could only have one I would take the dry bonus cut. no echo makes his vocal almost "otherworldly"....odd to hear it this way compared to the echo version, but something about that dry vocal makes it so special. Might be my single favorite Nat recording, so thanks for slipping that on there...I'm assuming it was an "oops, how did that get on that cd mistake"? or did they approve you including that from the get go? I've always wondered....

 

Oh, man, you are going to make us choose? While I loved being able to hear the CNN totally dry version (and I like it), the other version, track 2, seems to be imprinted on my brain. If I had to pick a new desert island version, maybe one with a smidgen less than track 2 would be interesting and a differentiating choice for the consumer.

 

I am not surprised to learn that Nat King Cole is what people want to talk about when they meet you. Somehow Nat could connect like few before or since. Having that voice and those arrangements is just icing on the cake. After being away from Stardust for awhile, when I do go back, Nat can still bring me around. For me it is usually when he finishes the introduction, and starts the phrase "Sometimes I wonder". What a release that is!

Thanks for the work you do to bring these Nat King Cole albums back with better sound.

Dale

 

It's fine by me. Just enough to add that special "grandeur" but doesn't get in the way. It's also better echo than I hear on a lot of these, both vintage and remixes with echo (like some on the Bear boxes). On the bad examples (most, IMH) the echo can seem to "shout" wrong or not quite compliment the soundfield right. Sounds "right" on the DCC.

What that "CNN version" proves to me is this: if there was a choice between what is considered a "state of the art industry standard" job using the real echo chambers, or you doing it in your fashion but zero echo chamber access, I'd rather you did it anyway. Let it be dry. If it's the gear or calibration or what all I don't know. The important thing is that the magic is there. The "weight," the actual vitality, the texture. The other CDs sound more like a cheap stereo, just different sensibilities. With Nat, especially in a sound like that, he could sing the phone book. Not that it was ever down to that but... y'know.

That's the thing. Love is the thing! Tee hee.

Probably said it before, but one of the wonderful things about this place has been meeting others who appreciate these things which are so special to me. So few around me would listen to it. Hip Hop, rap, Latin, some current Country radio, maybe top 10, never older than mid-'80s in the area, seems that's been the main thing around here ever since the mid-'80s. Classic pop could be from Persia for all it mattered. Usually listen to it on headphones. It's still a pleasant surprise to hear how many more folks also enjoy hearing Nat Cole.

Nat does "cut through" to an amazing degree, both with or some times in spite of the musical context. An interview posted hereabout revealed something I found interesting. Nat said guests to his house were always surprised to find he had little in the way of vocal non-jazz records in his own collection, except some Armstrong. Nat said "they can't understand it!" Somehow it didn't seem so surprising to me.

 

I have some "mastered by Ron Hill" EMI discs on Julie London. The sound on the mono tracks is bearable but on the stereo ones it's horrendous. Extreme smileyface eq and noise reduction killing all the air in the recording. I wouldn't consider any late 90's work from this particular engineer to be a replacement for anything, excet of course "your worst headache".

I have some Norberg that's annoying in my own collection. Wasn't the 1994 Greatest Hits on Capitol his work? You know, the disc that begins with the original "Unforgettable" and ends with the duet version . . . .

 

Always #9 when doing Classic Capitol, Steve? How bout on Just One of Those Things? I remember what a revelation that was when I first heard it - having grown up on the original stereo Lp, SW 903. Night and day.

 

A couple of great shots from the Love is the Thing sessions, December 1956.

 

What chambers do you use on the orchestra, Steve? I remember the echo being stereo on there, right?

Beautiful pictures, Jordan...

 

Thanks Steve! Is each chamber mic'd in stereo?

Stereo echo on Nat...that's what I meant, sorry. Obviously the orchestra would have stereo echo...