Nat King Cole: "Hittin' the Ramp" - early-period set from Resonance, rel. Nov. 1, 2019*

Yes, and a worthy endeavor. A well executed labor of love.

Joyous sounding vinyl box. Quietly pressed, not a tick on my 10 slabs o' goodness.

 

It cost them a LOT of money to produce this set as nothing was spared. It is 1st Class all the way and not a "cheap alternative" was chosen at any level of the production of either the LP's or CD's.

 

Everytime i pull out a record from that set to play it feels special.

 

Just bought the CD set for £35......I hope!

Just as I thought (thankfully) no one has yet linked to a sampler or best off with the same title or artwork, let alone UPC. So by my reckoning the eBay listing should be correct selling the 7 CD box at that price.

I was (still will be until I have it in hand) sceptical that anyone might be selling this so heavily discounted already, especially when other sellers are milking it for all it's worth.

Even the Resonance web site with the 50% discount is charging $40 postage to UK making it the same overall price as Amazon UK.

 

One of the great things about this set. Is the many radio tracks, where you hear the trio in front of a live audience.

 

Their playing sound effortless and playful. Dont they actually start laughing at one point? Or do i remember wrong

 

I just placed an order for it. I called Resonance and we figured out how to get the shipping cost down without resorting to Media Mail, with the heatwave currently going on on the east coast.

 

I am late to this party. I just got this set about 3 weeks ago. I had no idea it existed. I was visiting the Resonance website to see what other LPs they might have made recently. Wow!!! This set was an instant purchase. The more amazing thing for me is I somehow managed to miss this thread on this site until two days ago. I just got done reading all 21 pages of it.

First of all: Thanks and congratulations to all of the people at Resonance who were responsible for this amazing and wonderful set. Special thanks to @jtaylor and @MLutthans for all of your wonderful work on the set. Also thanks for your participation in this thread which is probably the most informative Music Corner thread I have read on here. Thanks to all of the thread participants for their insight and posting the links to reviews and podcasts about this set.

I have many CDs and several LPs of Trio material, but this is the first time I have heard any of this pre-Capitol material. What a revelation. I had 2 strong reactions. Like others have mentioned here, the three part scat singing is amazing. If you don't think about it too much it is just casual scat singing, improvised on the fly. But this is THREE part scat singing and they are totally in synch and often singing at a fast pace. This is the pre-tape days and they are also heard doing it live. They are not laying down a vocal track, they are playing some amazing riffs on their instruments and singing perfect three part harmonies. I can't imagine the hours of rehearsal to get things so tight.

My second reaction was to Oscar Moore on acoustic guitar. It was very interesting to me and the first time I heard him on acoustic guitar. I will admit I like the songs after he took up the electric guitar a lot better. Maybe because this is what I was familiar with, but I don't think that was it. It is ironic to me that Oscar was strongly influenced by Charlie Christian. I am a huge fan of Charlie Christian and one of the things that is often said about him is he was the first electric guitar player to make the instrument sound musical and blend in well with the rest of the band. Before Charlie the sounds of the electric guitar was described as a loud ker-chunk, ker-chunk, ker-chunk that overpowered the other instruments and interrupted the swing of the music. To my surprise I found a bit of this quality in Oscar's acoustic playing, whereas his electric guitar playing was smooth and flowing. I got used to it, and I like these tracks, but I do prefer the tracks with the electric guitar.

A final comment on the LP Box: The pressings were dead flat, and dead quiet. The sound was as good as it gets for this type of material. I am glad I sprung for the LP box. This is a most impressive box set. A work of art in every way.

 

Just received my 7CD box. It's in my hand right hand, just collected it. So for anyone hesitating the guy selling it on EBay for £35 is genuine.

What a delicious bargain. Guess that's my evening entertainment sorted!

 

Thank you for the information I just ordered his last copy.

peace and love✌Dave

 

Glad it's gone to a good home!

 

I have often wondered why, in comparison to this set, there is so little love and attention paid to the Mosaic Nat Cole box set.

 

Unless you’re lucky, you’re looking at around $400 for the CD version of the Mosaic set. That and the length of time that it’s been out of print (15, 20 years?).

 

Well I’ve got my copy (on cd ), thanks again to SteveM for the heads up, and it sounds fantastic.
Don’t think I’ve ever heard recordings from 1936 sound this good!
The whole package has clearly been a labour of love and the work that’s gone into this makes you wonder why some other releases can’t produce a quality product like this within this price range.
( I’m looking at you Mr McCartney!)

Well done to all involved and thank you.

peace and love✌Dave

 

There are 10 thousand people who have the set. Certainly many on this thread are not new fans of Nat Cole. Beyond those 10,000 owners, there are likely more than ten times that many with cdr copies from friends or downloads from one of the well known torrent sites. I am still surprised that there is so little discussion of Nat's best era as a pianist-singer.

 

When new, it was about $270 (18 x $15 + about $15 shipping), so $400 is not a large mark-up percentage.

I bought an extra mint copy for $150 two or three years ago to give to my sister. It had sat on the web site selling it for quite a while.

 

It was issued thirty years ago, the Resonance set less than one. I'm sure if forums like this had existed when the KC3 Mosaic was released, then you would have seen a comparable amount of discussion.

For the record, though, there are countless threads here—several years worth—devoted to Nat Cole, with hundreds of posts devoted to discussion of the trio's output for Capitol.

 

Not to mention that this wonderful set is actually currently available and covers a number of labels and transcription services, etc. An incredible feat. I love the Mosaic set, but this set is something that is a near miracle this late in the reissue game.

 

Just ordered this at Acoustic Sounds and got a 15% discount and free Fedex shipping so I’m happy. This is a set I’ve been wanting for decades but never got around to chasing down a good sounding copy. There was a period of time where it wasn’t that easy to find in any format and it fell off the list. This sounds like a good version and Resonance vinyl has been good in the past.

 

After more reading here and elsewhere I realized that this is different music than what I had interested in years ago. I do remember being tempted by the laserlight release but didn’t trust the sound quality would be good enough. The Mosaic box is different too and at the time it was released I wasn’t interested in it. So I think I have it all straight now and I’m excited to have this set coming my way. I’ve wanted to hear early Nat for a long time and outside of some Lester Young recordings I have little experience so this will be a real treat. I can’t believe I waited almost a year after its release but glad it’s still available.

 

You are indeed in for a treat!