Unforgettable: The Life and Mystique of Nat King Cole - Hardcover

Gourse, Leslie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312059825 ISBN 13: 9780312059828

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1991

Synopsis

Discusses Nat King Cole, whose satin voice belied his rough life, detailing his Alabama boyhood, his marriages, his revolutionary jazz piano style, and his struggles with prejudice and hatred

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Gourse's life of satin-voiced Nat King Cole has plenty of spring and grit, much more so than his Louis's Children: American Jazz Singers (1984). The tragedy of Cole's life (1917-65) lay in his very success as a singer of such lightly mystical pop ballads as ``Nature Boy,'' ``Mona Lisa,'' and even the title ballad here, ``Unforgettable,'' now turning up as a hypnotic come-on for a perfume ad on TV. Before his vocalizing hit big in the mid-40's (today his voice trails behind only Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong in airplay), Cole was a pianist vastly respected in the jazz world as the sparkling rhythmic motor of The Nat King Cole Trio. He was always canny about money, and his sudden adulation as the world's top black singer, which made him a millionaire at 30, was too strong to turn down. At his death, from lung cancer, he had 175 unreleased tracks in inventory at Capitol Records, which the company was reluctant to release--because they were too trite. It is still a tragedy that Cole's vocalizing has replaced the 300 or so jazz tracks his trio cut from the late 30's to 1946. Cole was a minister's son, and something spiritual infused his balladry. He was beyond scandal, even when he left his first wife Nadine for the mesmerically influential Maria Ellington (no relation to Duke), although his tax troubles with the IRS tracked some ink. It appears that the IRS- -more interested in Cole having sneaked into a fine house in a fine white neighborhood than in the $150,000 he owed--watched the house rather than attach his royalties from Capitol Records. Cole later had bleeding ulcers from his anxieties. From a rural Alabama childhood to life at the top, with Sinatra as his pallbearer. The early jazz pages are magnetic, and Cole practically sits in the reader's lap throughout. And it's well researched, too. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Gourse ( Everyday: The Story of Joe Williams ) pays homage to the performer who, after starting out as a talented jazz pianist, found unprecedented fame and commercial success as a vocalist. His renditions of "Mona Lisa," "Nature Boy," "Unforgettable" and hundreds of other songs were known the world over by the time he died in 1965. Cole, a cheerful, quiet, painfully shy man who inspired devotion wherever he went, kept his personal problems out of the limelight; his adoring public was scarcely aware that he was plagued by financial woes, racial prejudice, marital difficulties, illness and complaints from critics that he had abandoned jazz for an easier road to success with popular music. The author of this well-crafted, sympathetic biography carefully pieces together the facts of her subject's life, and concludes with an impressive discography that underscores Cole's achievement. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0312059825
• ISBN 13: 9780312059828
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 309