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

I do not recall. Sorry.

 

Speaking of which.....

This set goes up to (but not including) Nat's first Capitol recording, which was Straighten Up and Fly Right. Prior to that Capitol recording, Nat recorded the song three times (that have survived), and two of them appear in this set.

•August 1943, for the film Here Comes Elmer. This version is not in the set, but you can see/hear the track here:

That film version does not appear in the set, as it is incomplete with some very odd, un-musical edits in spots.

•November 8, 1943, Jubilee program #51, for Armed Forces Radio, but recorded at NBC in Hollywood. This is a highly different arrangement compared to the Capitol version, and was only ever released on the BIAC label in Belgium, where it appeared in fake stereo. The new set uses a new transfer from a 16" AFRS disk in the Wayne Knight Collection at UCSB.

•"August 11, 1943" -- this possibly mis-dated version appeared on a 15-minute Armed Forces program called "Personal Album" (program #227 in that series) that we thought was lost to the ages. To our delight, at the last minute, we tracked down a one-off, early 50s (?) 12" microgroove acetate dub of the 1943 16" pre-microgroove disk, possibly made as a favor to the late Roy Holmes of Surrey, England, in whose collection the acetate was residing. Roy's son Rob arranged to have the disk transferred for us in the UK. The disk had degraded somewhat (in a few places, the soft, acetate groove walls have given up the ghost, and the adjacent groove's music is briefly audible, "out of place" by 1.8 seconds), but we included it despite the imperfections, which are fleeting in nature. I have suspicions about the date's accuracy because the performance is incredibly similar to the released Capitol version, to the point that it almost could be an alternate from that session. My suspicion -- nothing more -- is that it was recorded well after the November 8 version mentioned above, but prior to the Capitol recording of November 30. Whatever the actual date, by the time of the recording, the soon-to-be Capitol arrangement was fully developed and masterfully performed. This is presented as the final track in the set, with spoken commentary by Nat before and after the performance.

 

Maybe even, as hinted at in previous discussions, a mixup of US vs. UK date formats, i.e, 8/11/43 (UK) and 11/8/43 (US) meaning the same thing, and possibly getting mixed up.

 

Neither Jordan nor I were involved in the discussions with the owner of those Victor sessions, so we have no pertinent details to add to what Jordan said (above) . Those tracks were certainly on the proposed track list from day one, but it was not to be.

They are all available in other official releases (LP, CD, and iTunes).

 

...and just to clarify, there were eight such tracks, plus an alternate take of "Dough-Ra-Me."

 

Some here may recall this post from two years ago. The questions posed there came from guitarist Nick Rossi, whose playing style is very much influenced by Oscar Moore. Nick and I have struck up a bit of a long-distance friendship over the last couple of years (since that post), and I was delighted when Zev Feldman from Resonance reached out to Nick to write an essay about Oscar for the boxed set. It's about time Oscar gets some attention!

I stand in awe of Oscar's playing throughout the set, especially on the early tracks where he plays acoustic.

 

Those Decca holdings were donated by MCA to the Library of Congress several years ago -- 1998, I think, but don't quote me -- and the infamous Universal fire that everybody is so atwitter about had zero impact on our set. Metal parts have been largely non-existent since the 1950s, but seven songs have surviving metal parts today, and we used existing digital transfers for six of them, and existing analog transfers (of metal parts that no longer exist) for several others. We avoided transferring from 78s unless there was absolutely nothing else available, such as for the single version of Sweet Lorraine. I think this is the best the Decca tracks have ever sounded, but I am admittedly both biased and maybe a little "too close to the project" to feel otherwise.

The tracks are all speed/pitch-corrected, which may be a little jarring to those who are used to hearing them off-speed, as they have appeared on many past releases.