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...COMPLETE CAPITOL RECORDINGS OF THE NAT KING COLE TRIO (Mosaic...
...most important (flash! bam!), the intrepid Mosaic Records has just released The Complete Capitol Recordings of The Nat King Cole Trio: 18 CDs or 27 LPs, with a total of 349 cuts and about 17 hours of music. Great American music comes in lots of styles, but whatever the sound, it doesn't get much greater than this. Any one of the tunes in this collection can swing you off on a cashmere cloud...
Well, almost never. Hit tunes from late in his career like Those Lazy-Hazy- Crazy Days of Summer and Ramblin' Rose stretched his credentials pretty thin and are nowhere to be found on Mosaic. Neither are such excellent songs as Mona Lisa, a 1950 smash that was also the first Cole side to have no trio inflection whatsoever. The Mosaic set is for jazz fans, not nostalgists, and at $270 it is not an impulse purchase. (It is available only by mail or phone order from Mosaic...
...piano, the trio style is evident and hopefully there is some jazz content." Even such a flexible standard becomes a little restrictive by the early '50s, < when Cole turned more and more toward often wonderfully arranged orchestrations by Nelson Riddle, Billy May, Pete Rugolo and others. One of the Mosaic set's standout cuts is Cole's benchmark version, arranged by Rugolo, of Billy Strayhorn's great ballad of fantasy, loneliness and longing, Lush Life. There is also Nature Boy -- no getting away from that -- and such toothsome novelties as four duets with Johnny Mercer, including the memorably titled Save...
...whole lot for him in the jazz community, which had been buffeted by bop and the restless experimentation of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. Cole began to look like a silken technician who'd sold his soul. One of the best things about this Mosaic set is that it helps to correct that impression and shows Cole for the artist he was. He wasn't corrupted by the mainstream. He used jazz to enrich and renew it, and left behind a lasting legacy. Very like a king...