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Nat „King“ Cole – Riffin‘: The Decca Jatp Keynote & Mercury Recordings
Amazon:
Nat King Cole was surely a smooth singer and a gentle swinger. But he was also a consummate jazz piano player who recorded secretly as a sideman for Keynote and Mercury – using amusing pseudonyms – even as he rose to fame recording hit after hit for Capitol Records. Riffin: The Decca, JATP, Keynote and Mercury Recordings, a 3-CD box set, features Nat backing his many friends in the 1940s, as well as his original King Cole Trio singles on Decca – a total of 53 tracks significantly restored and remastered, and housed in a beautiful 7 3/8″ square box set with a 30-page book stuffed with rare photos, a brilliant essay by David Ritz, detailed session notes and reproductions of the original releases‘ artwork, from 78 RPM labels to 10-inch LP covers and much more.
Disc 1 includes Nat’s first recordings with his brother Eddie’s band the Solid Swingers, then in his own King Cole Trio in the early 1940s, when he was first heard vocalizing; best known among them is his first hit, „Sweet Lorraine.“ Bonus tracks include four swingin‘ Keynote label recordings from ’46, „Keynoters“ band sessions led by saxophonist Willie Smith and featuring one „Lord Calvert“ – a.k.a. Nat King Cole on piano.
Nat was also the pianist for Norman Granz’s first Jazz At The Philharmonic (JATP) concerts, trading solos with the future legend Les Paul and others in the summer of ’44 – while he’s otherwise a headlining superstar – and those rousing live jam sessions make up Disc 2. The set’s Disc 3 features Nat as „Aye Guy,“ playing behind Dexter Gordon, and Lester „Pres“ Young and Buddy Rich – significant sessions that are Dex’s first as a leader and Pres‘ first after a horrific Army stint. Bonus tracks are alternates of the Keynoters tracks.
All of these display what the late great Oscar Peterson called Nat’s „relaxed sense of melody and rhythmic genius.“
Allmusic:
Nat King Cole spent virtually all of his career with a contract from Capitol. (The classic Capitol Records tower, near Sunset & Vine in Hollywood, wasn’t known as „the house that Nat built“ for nothing.) But his earliest sides appeared on a range of labels, including, but not limited to, Decca, Keynote, and Mercury. (Aside from what’s heard here, the King Cole Trio recorded dozens of effervescent songs between 1938 and 1941 for transcription services, music that has only rarely been commercially issued.) Riffin‘: The Decca, JATP, Keynote and Mercury Recordings puts a wrapper around a fair share of his non-Capitol sides, some of them early (Decca) and some of them live (JATP) and some of them as a sideman (complete with hilarious noms de plume) for Lester Young and others (Mercury). Best are the early King Cole Trio sides, from 1940-1941, when the group was still writing songs and delivering them with the energy and flair of a club act, making mini-masterpieces from off-the-cuff songs „I Like to Riff,“ „Call the Police,“ and „Stop! The Red Light’s On.“ Novelties for sure, but novelties with tight group interplay that showed what small-group swing could do, along with bouncing solos from Cole’s piano that earned him fame and influence far beyond what the singer of „Unforgettable“ could have garnered. Also well-deserving of attention is his 1946 session with Lester Young (and drummer Buddy Rich) for a Mercury album that sees him giving Young the best accompaniment he would ever receive. The JATP sides cover a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert from 1944 where Cole’s piano was heard (faintly) with a jam session including flamboyant, roof-raising solos from Les Paul, Illinois Jacquet, and J.J. Johnson, among others. (Cole’s modesty in these circumstances is humbling.) This three-disc wrap-up isn’t a unified set — despite the material ranging only from 1936 to 1944 — but it captures His Majesty in a range of circumstances; quite fitting for the man esteemed by jazz fans as one of the greatest pianists of all time, and by vocal fans as likely the best interpreter of popular song in the 20th century.
Ich besitze zwar schon die 40s JATP Box und habe auch die Session mit Pres (in dessen Verve Box), die Decca Singles, die Session mit Gordon und ein Teil der Mercury-Aufnahmen sind aber neu für mich und bei diesem Preis musste ich einfach zugreifen!
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