The Songbirds Archives

Once upon a time, in that bygone age of jazz superstars, Nat "King" Cole was one of the biggest names of all – arguably the biggest, at least among black singers. Between 1943 and 1963 Cole had 17 albums in the top 40 and dozens of hit singles. Excepting perhaps Sinatra and Presley, it was a record unmatched by few if any vocalists, black or white, during those decades.

Cole started out as an jazz pianist in the early 1940s, under the influence of Teddy Wilson and Earl Hines. His early Decca recordings, with his innovative trio (guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Wesley Prince), have been collected on the CD Hit That Jive, Jack (Universal/GRP). While clearly jazz-oriented, the trio, and especially Cole's vocalizing, was from the outset starting to show signs of moving toward a more pop-flavored mode, for example on Sweet Lorraine (1940) or This Will Make You Laugh (1941). After the hit single, All for You for Decca in 1942, the trio was signed by the just-formed Capitol label, where Cole would remain until his death in 1965.

Cole's trio work wound up pretty much in limbo when Pete Rugolo became musical director at Capitol in 1949. Cole's and Rugolo's alliance can be heard on Lush Life: Nat Cole with Pete Rugolo (Capitol). During this time, Cole made big band-arranged recordings with Billy May, Gordon Jenkins, and of course Nelson Riddle, with whom he worked for nearly ten years. With Riddle he developed the single theme or concept album, e.g., Nat Cole Sings for Two in Love, which slightly preceded the similar Sinatra-Riddle theme recordings, e.g., Songs for Young Lovers.

Although he went almost wholly, and successfully, pop and mainstream in the 1950s, Cole now and then went back to his roots as a jazz player and singer. Between 1952 and 1957 he made three albums which featured him on piano: Penthouse Serenade (1952), The Piano Style of Nat King Cole (1955), and the one at hand, 1957's After Midnight, the best of the three, and the culmination of Cole's later jazz-biased recordings.

He is backed here by the trio of guitarist John Collins, Charlie Harris or Lee Young on drums, plus on two tracks Jack Costanzo on congas and bongos. In addition, the trio is joined by four guest soloists: Harry "Sweets" Edison, trumpet; Willie Smith, alto; Juan Tizol, trombone; and Stuff Smith, violin.

Several of the tunes included here had been recorded earlier by Cole and by this time had become standard Cole repertoire. These include Sweet Lorraine, It's Only a Paper Moon, (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66, and Candy. The other tunes were vocalized here for the first time by Cole in this small-group format (Just You, Just Me and I Know That You Know were done earlier by Cole as instrumentals). The five bonus tracks, plus the alternate take of You're Looking at Me (a tune beautifully covered by Diana Krall on her Cole tribute album), combined with the original album’s 12 tracks, make this an exceptionally prime record of Cole doing what he did best: singing and playing some marvelous tunes (mostly) in a small combo setting.

Highlights include three Stuff Smith tracks: a swinging I Know That You Know; a snappy, up-tempo When I Grow Too Old to Dream; and a bluesy, slow-drag treatment of Sometimes I'm Happy, all of which showcase Cole in his trademark creamy-smooth manner. Several of the tracks featuring Willie Smith are also outstanding. Give a listen, for example, to Smith groove on Don't Let It Go to Your Head or Just You, Just Me. Likewise notable is Harry Edison's luscious muted trumpeting on You Can Depend on Me and Candy.

Surprisingly, the oft-recorded Caravan here proves to be rather unexciting, despite the presence of Tizol, one of the song's composers, and percussionist Costanzo; perhaps it's one of those tunes that requires a big-band arrangement. In any case, the Ellington-Tizol standard comes across on this session as sort of ho-hum, not helped any by a clumsy fade at the close.

For the most part, however, all the players are uniformly fine throughout, with Cole over and over reminding us what a great pianist he was. Catch him cook, for example, on Just You, Just Me. And for me at least there was one pleasant surprise: Don't Let It Go to Your Head, a fetching song which I had never heard before but here given the inimitable Cole treatment.

The only real clinker in the 18 tracks is a piece of fluff called The Lonely One, an obvious attempt to come up with another Nature Boy, and an obvious failure. And I could live happily ever after without the country-western flavored Two Loves Have I, featuring some hill-country fiddling by Smith. Otherwise, this is a most welcome release for fans of Cole, a fine reminder of what a fine jazz singer and musician he was.

Mel Tormé at the Movies
Rhino (R2 75481), U.S., 1999

This is a highly enjoyable Tormé collection, although the title, cover picture, and Rhino’s history of issuing rare soundtrack material could mislead you into thinking that this is a compilation of moments from Tormé’s movie musicals. That conclusion would be only half right, for it describes only half of the twenty tracks here. But among that half, there are treasures. As for the rest – a grab-bag mostly of songs Tormé recorded for Atlantic in the early 1960s that just happen to be tunes from films – well, several of them make for mighty nice listening, too.

The first track, Mrs. Whiffen, is one of the treasures. Cut from Tormé’s first movie, Higher and Higher, this is one of those numbers, recurrent in 1940s movie musicals, that expressed the theme of the tension between swing and classical, hepcat and square, pop and high culture, young and old. The song’s ancient yet "with it" title character is described this way: She’s got one foot in the grave and one foot in the groove. Pity they don’t write ‘em like that anymore. Tormé, only 17 at the time, is an important part of the ensemble here and has several featured sections. From the sound of them, he was already a virtuoso.

From MGM’s Good News, The Best Things in Life Are Free features a chorus-and-a-half of Tormé setting up the tune before Peter Lawford comes in. When Tormé moves from the repeat of the bridge into the last "A" section, he subtly executes a modulation so extraordinarily difficult for most anyone but him. Tormé makes it sound like falling off a log.

Rhino has unearthed some other rarities among the movie tracks, and among the later Atlantic tracks, Sunday in New York, with an arrangement by John Williams (then known as Johnny) is especially enjoyable. What a great song, and how interesting that it remains the only song by its composer, cocktail-jazz pianist Peter Nero, that is known at all today. Also a standout is Frank Loesser’s The Lady’s in Love With You. It’s worth noting that the theme of this song’s lyric is an exact mirror image, told from the opposite-sex angle, of the title song from Guys and Dolls that Loesser would write some years later.

The audio restoration, especially on the older selections, is superb, and is by Doug Schwartz of Audio Mechanics – the same engineer who did amazing work on the recent Judy Garland Duets CD. Schwartz is definitely the guy to go to with when restoring archival material. Will Friedwald’s notes are fun and mostly informative, although he does mistakenly identify a scatted quote in Love is Just Around the Corner as Rhythm on the River, when in fact it is the great Burke-Van Heusen song Personality.

You can’t hear this album without mourning the loss of Mel Tormé all the more. His virtuosity was more that of an instrumentalist than a singer – his ability to negotiate difficult intervals, daunting modulations, tricky rhythms with impossible ease – but that virtuosity was combined with a warm, humorous, romantic sound and an intelligent delivery of lyrics that make you very glad he was a singer. It was a combination unique in its time and will likely remain so for the rest of our lives.

Blue Note Records (Capitol Jazz):

Rhino Records

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