Will Friedwald - Straighten Up and Fly Right

Gary Giddins, Series Editor

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Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole

Will Friedwald

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Will Friedwald 2020

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Friedwald, Will, 1961 author.

Title: Straighten up and fly right : the life and music of Nat King Cole / Will Friedwald.

Description: New York City : Oxford University Press, 2020. |

Series: Cultural biographies | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2019049935 (print) | LCCN 2019049936 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190882044 (cloth) |

ISBN 9780190882051 (pdf) | ISBN 9780190882068 (epub) | ISBN 9780190882075

Subjects: LCSH: Cole, Nat King, 19191965. | SingersUnited StatesBiography. |

PianistsUnited StatesBiography. | Jazz musiciansUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC ML420.C63 F75 2020 (print) | LCC ML420.C63 (ebook) |

DDC 782.42164092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049935

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049936

Dedicated to the children of Nat and Maria ColeNatalie, Kelly, and the twins, Casey and Timolin (who were born exactly ten days after I was)and especially to the much-missed Carole Cookie Cole, who loved what I wrote about A Blossom Fell and who encouraged me to write this book. And, not least, also to Freddy.

But most of all, as always, to Patty: my Mona Lisa, my ramblin rose, and my ballerina.

Praise The Lord with the harp;

make music to Him on the ten-stringed lyre.

Sing to Him a new song;

play skillfully, and shout for joy.

from Psalm 33

Old King Cole was a merry old soul,

And a merry old soul was he;

He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl,

And he called for his fiddlers three.

Every fiddler he had a fiddle,

And a very fine fiddle had he;

Oh, theres none so rare, as can compare,

With King Cole and his fiddlers three.

Traditional

Will Friedwald on NKC: cognoscenti will be thrilled, but hardly surprised, to find that this seemingly inevitable book (he has been analyzing and chronicling Nat King Cole for a few decades in essays, liner notes, and his indispensable Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers) exceeds its promise. There are other volumes on the incomparable King, but this is the one that marries the life to the art. It shows us how one of the finest pianists and most imaginative ensemble leaders of his generation became that generations supreme crooner, swinging sublimely and setting hearts aglow with a uniquely suave candor and implacable charm. Reading this biography of Cole, you may even surmise that the postwar era in American popular music was truly the Age of Nat, rather than Frank or Elvis. Cole was everywhere, despite the restraints of bigotry. Heres a tip to get in the mood: go online and watch the TV duet of Nat Cole and Ella Fitzgerald on Its Alright with Me. Can we agree that he was the very embodiment of aplomb?

The first two records I asked my mother to buy me for our monophonic console, back in the Autumn of 1956, were Presleys I Want You, I Need You, I Love You b/w My Baby Left Me (a 78 rpm disc because thats mostly what we had), and Coles Thats All There Is to That b/w A Dream Sonata (a purple, donut-hole 45), in part because those were two names I recognized from radio. We were in a suburban supermarket, browsing a display of new records available at three speeds. The 78, in time, slipped from my hands and shattered. The 45 lies before me, a reminder that, as Friedwald demonstrates, though Mr. Cole would not rock and roll, he did help to create rhythm and blues, without which, etc. etc. Thats All There Is to That is now a forgotten rhythm number with triplets and male choir, but back then it got plenty of Top-40 radio play, and the B-side let you in on his cool manner with a ballad, a gift few pop singers could touch, let alone match. Ray Charles found his own style after an apprenticeship imitating Nat and his illustrious trio.

If Frank and Elvis divided the generations in those years, Nat never really did. Like Armstrong and Crosby, he was a musical unifier: easygoing, yes, but not easy listening in the derogatory sense. He had too much feeling for that. Friedwald offers a diverting depiction of Coles unexpected success with Nature Boy, a divining rod of a song in 1948, a harbinger of the beats to say nothing of the Summer of Love. It got so many radio spins that its producer pondered trying to limit them for fear that people would tire of it. People never did.

Still, many postwar jazz lovers had no idea how fully accomplished an artist he was. For me, that epiphany was cued by two comments: Dizzy Gillespie noted that there was no pianist he preferred to play with than Nat Cole; and a colleague expressed horror when I admitted I had not heard the 1957 album, After Midnight. (Another tip: go to that discs I Know That You Know and check out the instrumental exchanges between Cole and the violinist Stuff Smith.) From then on, I had to hear everything he had done. Even so, it was not until years later that Friedwald himself told me about the 1958 album, St. Louis Blues, a far deeper work than Coles biopic inspired by the life of W. C. Handy, in which the blues are miraculously transmuted into a cross between love songs and spirituals.

Cole effortlessly, or so it appeared, presided over the transitional culture of the 1950s, defining its surface optimism, beneath which a strange passivity masked a momentous daring waiting to erupt: as Marlon Brando said when asked, in The Wild One (1953), what he was rebelling against, Whaddaya got? Cole, forever natty and trim in his bespoke suits and narrow ties, brandishing a contagious confidence and self-esteem, was not above the meretricious (Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer), but somehow it never tarnished him. Nothing could. He was the first African American to have his own network television show, though NBC could not find the sponsors for it. Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark, Cole said, and moved forward. Though he died way too young, his art retained its undiminished satisfaction.