Rediscovering Nat 'King' Cole

By CHARLES J. GANS - 3/2/00

- When a new king, Elvis Presley, dethroned him from the top of the pop charts, Nat ``King'' Cole didn't become bitter or try to turn himself into something he wasn't. In a nod to the changing fashions, he simply added the satirical ``Mr. Cole Won't Rock and Roll'' to his nightclub act in the late 1950s.

That's why Carol Cole admits she was surprised when she heard her father would be among the inductees Monday to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

``My initial reaction was that I was somewhat shocked, but that was before I understood that he was being inducted as an early influence, and then it made a lot of sense,'' said Cole, who administers her father's estate. ``It obviously relates to his trio days.''

The Hall of Fame is not inducting the Nat ``King'' Cole most people remember: Not the suave crooner whose recordings of such ballads as ``Mona Lisa'' and ``Nature Boy'' endure 35 years after his death from lung cancer. Not daughter Natalie's posthumous singing partner in 1991's Grammy-winning ``Unforgettable'' and last year's ``The Christmas Song.'' Not the man whose songs are heard in dozens of films (``Sleepless in Seattle,'' ``As Good As It Gets''), TV shows (``Ally McBeal'' and ``Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'') and ad campaigns (Acura, BMW and MCI) from the 1990s.

Instead, the Hall of Fame is honoring the Nat ``King'' Cole who until recently was largely forgotten: the hip pianist and singer whose drummer-less trio with bass and guitar was one of the most popular and innovative small jazz combos of the 1940s, an influence on future generations of jazz and rhythm and blues artists.

``I think that Nat 'King' Cole should have been inducted a long time ago, but I'm glad we finally got around to it,'' said Seymour Stein, president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and founder of Sire Records.

``I would say that his career in rhythm and blues was as strong if not stronger than his later career in pop,'' Stein said. ``Without question, the main component of rock 'n' roll was rhythm and blues ... and Nat Cole was one of the top R&B artists of all time.''

After Cole stood up from the piano bench to sing and abandoned his trio in the early 1950s, its memory gradually faded. Jazz purists felt betrayed when Cole turned to pop, and he received only passing mention in jazz reference books. For decades, his trio recordings were practically unavailable.

But Carole Cole said the trio remained at ``the core of everything my father did even after he crossed over'' to become a pop superstar in front of large orchestras.

``I always believed that's where his heart remained, which isn't to say he didn't enjoy and excel in being a pop singer,'' she said. ``In clubs and concerts, there was always a moment in the show when he would say, `And now for you music lovers,' and then he'd sit down at the piano and jam with primarily a trio.''

In the past decade, the Cole trio has enjoyed a renaissance. There has been a steady outpouring of recordings, from the Grammy-winning 18-CD ``The Complete Capitol Recordings of the Nat 'King' Cole Trio'' (Mosaic) in 1991 to the recently released ``Live at the Circle Room'' (Capitol Jazz), a rare document of a live club date from 1946. Carole Cole says more releases are planned as the Capitol vaults yield up more treasures.

Some of the brightest stars on the contemporary jazz scene, including Diana Krall and John Pizzarelli, have acknowledged their debt with recordings that re-create the Cole trio's instrumentation and reinterpret its repertoire.

And a new biography, ``Nat King Cole,'' by Daniel Mark Epstein, published last fall by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, is the most definitive to date and does much to set the record straight about Cole's formative years and contribution to jazz.

``The fact is that Nat's pop music was so huge that it eclipsed the jazz music,'' said Epstein, in an interview. ``There was a certain amount of snobbism in the world of criticism ... that if a man or woman is popular then they couldn't possibly be great.''

In looking closely at Cole's pre-pop jazz career - as a triple-threat pianist, singer and small combo leader - Epstein concluded that he deserves to be ranked among the first tier of jazz greats, alongside Louis Armstrong or John Coltrane.

The biography describes how Cole's father, a Baptist minister, brought his family from Alabama to Chicago during the great black migration of the 1920s. Cole's mother taught him gospel on the piano so he could play in his father's church. But the precocious boy was soon sneaking out at night to stand outside clubs and listen to Armstrong, Earl ``Fatha'' Hines and other legends from the Golden Age of Jazz.

The biography re-creates one night at the Savoy Ballroom in 1935 when the 16-year-old, then known as ``Schoolboy'' Cole, more than held his own against Hines in a battle of the bands. Hines, who Epstein says ``brought into jazz piano playing the complexity of the European musical tradition,'' was Cole's first major influence.

``Nat struggled to play as fast, as richly and inventively as Earl Hines, and in the process discovered his own voice,'' said Epstein. ``Nat is much more of a poet, a lyricist. Hines creates these huge rather complex structures, and Nat pares down all that.

``Nat becomes the pianist who in the late '30s and early '40s creates the link between the Golden Age of Jazz and the bebop era - mainly by knowing what to leave out in his playing. Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Oscar Peterson were all very much influenced by Nat. He was a key figure - one of the five greatest jazz pianists.''

Perhaps Cole's greatest contribution to jazz - creating the modern trio format - came about through a combination of luck and economic necessity when the 18-year-old pianist found himself stranded in Los Angeles in 1937 after a touring show fell apart.

A nightclub owner offered him a gig for a small group - with a bassist, guitarist and drummer - and then the drummer bowed out because the bandstand was too tiny. Cole hired two musicians recommended by Lionel Hampton: guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Wesley Prince.

He shaped a new ensemble sound using what had been thought of in jazz orchestras as three rhythm instruments. Cole found the perfect musical companion in Moore, an early innovator on the then-new electric guitar. When bassist Johnny Miller joined the trio

in 1942, after Prince was drafted, Cole had the classic group that would help establish the fledgling Capitol label. They had a string of hits, starting with ``Straighten Up and Fly Right'' in 1943, in which Cole's singing became ever more prominent.

``I think the most amazing aspect of the trio was that it was the first drummer-less jazz group of any note and they swung incessantly. No drummer could have helped them swing any harder,'' said record producer Michael Cuscuna, who oversaw the release of the limited edition ``Complete Capitol Recordings'' in 1991, and nearly a dozen Capitol CDs since then that showcase Cole's jazzier side.

``It would have been sad if they had just stayed a footnote in history,'' Cuscuna said. ``But now I think the group is really here to stay as much as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.''

The trio's legacy, however, is more than a collection of reissued archival recordings. Its influence can be heard in the music played by a new jazz generation.

Pianist-singer Krall, whose newest recording, ``When I Look in Your Eyes,'' is the first jazz CD to receive a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year since 1988, made her breakthrough with her 1996 album, ``All for You,'' a dedication to the Cole trio of the 1940s.

``I've listened to Nat Cole since I was 12 years old, sometimes on a daily basis,'' Krall said. ``His trio influenced all of the people I've admired and learned from, like Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans and Ahmad Jamal. Nat Cole is all over pretty much everything I do.''

Guitarist-singer Pizzarelli got introduced to Cole through his father, veteran jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, who led his own trio with piano, bass and guitar. The younger Pizzarelli has put his stamp on the Cole trio repertoire with two tribute albums, 1994's ``Dear Mr. Cole'' and ``P.S. Mr. Cole,'' released in September.

``There's no me without Nat 'King' Cole,'' said Pizzarelli, whose new recording, ``Kisses in the Rain,'' again features standards from the classic American songbook played by his piano-guitar-bass trio. ``There's nothing dated about the trio's music,'' Pizzarelli said. ``The songs sound just as if he had made them yesterday afternoon in the studio.''