Nat King Cole - The Christmas Song (1960) SACD from Audio Fidelity

Good enough! Thanks.

 

Oh boy, Matt, you are so right here and producer Gillette really made some splendid sequencing choices as you so well point out. Yes indeed, almost like four completely different recording sessions and yet the whole thing blends together beautifully as a package. A Christmas masterpiece to say the least. If I could only have three "desert island" Christmas albums in my entire collection, Nat's album would be one of them, along with Johnny Mathis's glorious Merry Christmas album and Percy Faith's stupendous instrumental album, Music Of Christmas Expanded Edition, which Real Gone Music put out last year with a truly magnificent remaster by Elvis restoration engineer Vic Anesini! No Christmas music lover of the Golden Age of Christmas music should be without these iconic albums in their music library.

 

The Jones attribution was merely speculative based on his documented participation during the "Nature Boy" remake; it seemed reasonable at the time to conclude that he also played on "The Christmas Song" remake session and others for the album. As for the piano in the center channel, this was covered in the thread devoted to THE EXTRAORDINARY (2-CD set from UMe that included several alternates, one of which was a center-channel-piano-less version of "Xmas"), and it is very likely that this is an undated overdub, perhaps within a matter of days, by Nat himself. The original 3-track assembly has a handwritten note for "Xmas" that says "needs piano" (or something along those lines) that was later scribbled out a little but it is still legible.

 

Thanks so much for that information about Nat possibly doing the piano solo on his iconic and final studio version of The Christmas Song. The more I re-read Matt's great post detailing some of the instruments that were recorded on the session, and particularly the piano notations for The Christmas Song, the more I realized he was trying to distinguish the solo piano that Nat might have played from the rest of the piano playing featured throughout the song. I am not a trained musician and not a Nat King Cole expert by any stretch, just a huge admirer of his for many years, but that great and delicate piano solo sure does sound a lot like Nat's fluid style does it not? I will get even greater enjoyment now, when listening to this iconic chestnut, knowing that indeed it is probably Nat himself playing that great piano solo!