Nat "King" Cole - All-Purpose Thread (was "year by year") - Part 5*

Interesting - and yet the first four discs of the Laserlight 5-disc set sound fantastic to me. Had them playing recently on my main system and was very pleased. I love that set. As I mentioned in a prior post, even though these tracks are on the expanded MacGregor transcription box, the Laserlight discs retain some of the scripted banter that set up the performances. All that fun stuff was removed from the purple box set.

 

RIP, Roy. 85 is my target age.

 

Anyone else have this 3 disc set? Pretty sure I picked it up when it first came out. I listened to it a little bit and then filed it away. Just dug it back out. Will have to give it another listen soon to see how it fares. I'm really only interested in the really early stuff here.

 

Matt, that's the one. there were 2 performances on April 19, 1960. He sang the same titles in the same order and they are, both sets, on the CD.

 

12 track compilation:

1. Unforgettable
2. Smile
3. Fly Me To The Moon
4. When I Fall In Love
5. Love
6. Route 66
7. It's Only A Paper Moon
8. Mona Lisa
9. Love (I doubt the song is repeated. Google Translate must have missed a word somewhere)
10. Embraceable You
11. Stardust
12. Autumn Leaves


My favourite bit of crazy translation from the description:

It was packed with only good songs that were flowing at that time that day, this is the best decided version, value for money Collectively in.

 

I wonder how that set compares sonically to the 6-record box set by the Longines Symphonette Society, which is the set I listened to when I was a kid. Also, I wonder how Little Child ended up on on this kind of comp. Is that set still the only place that track can be found?

 

If the set is a UK exclusive and it was cut by EMI, chances are that Harry Moss cut it. If the correct tapes were used, it could sound really good.

 

Diverse track list. I'd be curious to know if it uses overdubs on certain titles. If not, they could be the first appearance without the OD.

 

Hey... those are 2 of my favorite NKC songs.

 

I got this set in the mail today, ordered from Amazon UK. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, and might not for a while. Has anybody else picked this up yet?

 

To follow up on my earlier post: The Complete Nelson Riddle Recordings box set isn’t likely to win any awards for audio quality. I haven’t done a close comparison yet, but in sampling a multitude of songs across the eight discs, I was surprised by how flat and lifeless so many tracks sound.

I also don’t like that there isn’t information about which albums songs were originally released on. It’s cool to have recording dates and other session info, but I haven’t been listening to NKC long enough yet to know album track listings by heart.

On the positive side, this box set appears to have a number of the rare tracks from the Collectors Choice discs that were released a decade ago. I haven’t gone through and compared things closely, but I saw several tracks that I don’t have elsewhere yet.

 

I'm wondering what people think of the 1990 Rhino CD entitled "Jumpin' at Capitol." Bill Inglot and Larry Walsh are credited with the mastering. I didn't see too much about this CD in the archives; seems like some people enjoy it, but there isn't a lot of critical discussion or comparison with other CDs.

The Nat King Cole Trio - Jumpin' At Capitol: The Best Of The Nat King Cole Trio

I compared some of the common songs on this Rhino CD and the two "The Best Of The Nat King Cole Trio: The Vocal Classics" CDs on Capitol, which were done by Malcolm Addey. The differences were noticeable. It would probably be best to do a song-by-song comparison, but to generalize:
(1) there was more bass on the Capitol CDs; (2) there was less hiss on the Capitol CDs (sounded like more noise reduction than on the Rhino); and (3) some of the songs on the Rhino CD were playing at a faster speed -- in fact, the pitch was a full half-step higher on select songs, which means about 6% faster.

The first two things are a matter of a taste, but the speed issue bugs me. Does anyone if the Rhino disc, or the Capitol discs, present the songs at the "correct" speed? (And if we need to define what "correct" means in this context, then I guess that's another can of worms -- I'm not familiar with the original, pre-CD releases of this material.)

 

The glowing reviews all sound like they were written by the same person.

 

I sure would like to know about the off speed masterings. Looking forward to your report Matt.