Nat Cole documentary on American Masters

[John P. Cooper]

This was on Wednesday night here in LA on channel 28 KCET - a PBS station.
Pretty decent hour with good interviews with music biz folks and friends and family and some good interview footage with Nat himself speaking to the cameras on various topics. Lots of nice singing and playing as well.

No musical revelations for me, but I never realized he was such a ladies man.

I hope they run this one again, but for 20 clams, you can order it on DVD with additional footage.

[Ron Thorne]

---

May 17, 2006

Television Review

'The World of Nat King Cole' on PBS's American Masters

By ANITA GATES

Even for those of us who grew up during the civil rights struggle of the 1960's, it is sometimes startling to be reminded of the outrages.

The first one in "The World of Nat King Cole," an understated but compelling "American Masters" documentary on PBS tonight, is a newspaper headline about Cole that reads in part: "Negro Moving to Swank Area."

The second is the story of Cole's being attacked onstage by members of a white racist group in the middle of a concert in Birmingham, Ala., in 1956. In black-and-white news film, Cole, who suffered a slight back injury, is shown smiling and politely telling reporters that he's sure it was just a one-in-a-million occurrence. But he never went back to Birmingham.

Cole sang his many hits — "When I Fall in Love," "Mona Lisa," "Too Young," "Nature Boy" and "Smile," among them — in a husky, gentle voice and at a supremely relaxed pace. This documentary reflects that pace.

Nathaniel Coles was born in Montgomery, Ala., in 1919, but his father, a Baptist minister, moved the family to Chicago when Nat was a toddler.

Chicago in the 1920's had a lively music scene, and as a teenager Cole already had a band. He dropped the last letter of his surname after a colleague placed a crown on his head one day and started calling him King.

He headed for Los Angeles in the 1930's and played piano in his own jazz trio. But as Alan Livingston, former president of Capitol Records, remembers, someone soon said, "You know, Nat, you should be a singer." And the hit records started coming.

An impressive array of music-world notables praise Cole on camera. Isaac Hayes is followed by Pat Boone, and Stevie Wonder by Harry Connick Jr. Others include Tony Bennett, B. B. King, Carlos Santana, Quincy Jones and, of course, Natalie Cole.

The documentary doesn't mention Cole's income tax problems or go into great detail about his reported womanizing. But his second wife, Maria, recalls leaving the children behind — "In those days, a nanny was a nanny" — and traveling with her husband to fend off sexual temptations. Jack Costanzo, a onetime member of Cole's jazz trio, recalled that "women were crazy about Nat King Cole."

NBC, aware of his enormous popularity, gave him a variety series, "The Nat King Cole Show," in 1956 but ended it after 13 months because no corporate sponsor wanted to be associated with it. "Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark," Cole observed.

A heavy smoker, he died of lung cancer in 1965 at 45.

American Masters: The World of Nat King Cole

On most PBS stations tonight (check local listings).

Susan Lacy, series executive producer; Ian A. Hunt, producer/director; Barry Schulman, director of cultural and arts programs for Thirteen/WNET New York. Produced by Double Jab Productions for American Masters.

______________________________________________________________


If you're interested, you can purchase it here for $16.29 with FREE shipping.

[John P. Cooper]

I recall a great sense of shock when NKC died at so young an age. I remember one of my friends told me he had a very racist uncle and even the racist uncle was saddened to see him die so soon - "He was one of the good ones". Left handed poraise, but you can see how much he meant to so many people. He exuded a warmth that few people ever do.

Isaac Hayes comments about his being 'cool before it was cool to be cool' made little sense.

NKC love of women was mentioned and one woman named expressly as an affair he was having. I think it was the model/'actyress' Gunella Hutton who did that way old shaving cream commerical that used "The Stripper" by David Rose as background.

Cole was great at the keyboard and at the vocal mic.

[mke]

Terry Teachout didn't like it at all:

If you missed last night’s PBS American Masters documentary on Nat King Cole, don’t even think about catching a replay. Not only was the script a dumbed-down, once-over-lightly account of one of the most significant careers in the history of American popular music, but the show contained next to no uninterrupted footage of Cole in performance. In between the snippets was a numbing succession of talking-head interviews with such irrelevant celebrity interlopers as Whoopi Goldberg and Carlos Santana. Rarely have I endured so witless a piece of junk. Avoid it at all costs.

[John P. Cooper]

The above truly qualifies as a stupid, extremist review. Who is Terry Teachout?

[rollhead]

Teachout is a rightwinger who covers the arts for the Wall Street Journal, but he feels generally qualified to speak with authority -- and without humor or irony -- on any subject known to man.


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Terry Teachout (born 1956, Cape Girardeau, Missouri) is a critic, biographer and blogger. He is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal, the music critic of Commentary, and the author of "Sightings," a column about the arts in America that appears biweekly in the Saturday Wall Street Journal. He blogs at About Last Night and has written about the arts for many other magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times and National Review. He is currently at work on Hotter Than That, a biography of Louis Armstrong.

Teachout is the author of All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine (2004, Harcourt), A Terry Teachout Reader (2004, Yale University Press), The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken (2002, HarperCollins), and City Limits: Memories of a Small-Town Boy (1991, Poseidon Press), and the editor of Beyond the Boom: New Voices on American Life, Culture, and Politics (1990, Poseidon, introduction by Tom Wolfe) and Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers, 1931-1959 (1989, Regnery Gateway). In 1992 he rediscovered the manuscript of A Second Mencken Chrestomathy among H.L. Mencken's private papers and edited it for publication by Alfred A. Knopf (1995). He wrote the foreword to Paul Taylor's Private Domain: An Autobiography (1999, University of Pittsburgh Press) and contributed to The Oxford Companion to Jazz (2000, Oxford University Press). He has written liner notes for CDs by Karrin Allyson, Gene Bertoncini, Chanticleer, Jim Ferguson, Diana Krall, the Lascivious Biddies, Joe Mooney, Marian McPartland, Mike Metheny, Maria Schneider, Kendra Shank, and Luciana Souza.

Teachout attended St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD; William Jewell College in Liberty, MO, where he received his B.S. in music journalism; and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He lived in Kansas City from 1975 to 1983, working as a jazz bassist and a music critic for the Kansas City Star. He moved to New York City in 1985, working as an editor at Harper's Magazine (1985-87) and an editorial writer for the New York Daily News (1987-93) and as the News' classical music and dance critic (1993-2000). In 2004 he was appointed by President Bush to the National Council on the Arts, the civilian review panel of the National Endowment for the Arts. In late 2005 he was hospitalized with congestive heart failure, but has since recovered. A political conservative with wide-ranging cultural interests and sympathies, he maintains cordial relationships with artists, critics, and bloggers from all parts of the political spectrum.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Teachout"

[clinthopson]

Nat Cole is my favorite male singer. I've been a fan since
the 40's when he had a late night radio broadcast from the 7-11 Club in Hollywierd.

[John P. Cooper]

RH - Well, maybe he is nicer in person or something.

Clint - the documentary was fine. It was not a "Mosaic" type of thing, but any Nat Cole fan would find it enjoyable. It was nice to see a lot of footage and interviews and such. Some of the talking heads didn't have too much to ad, but they were not on for long.

I saw that his son was not on there - Kelly Cole. Is he dead now or just unavailable?

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by clinthopson

Nat Cole is my favorite male singer. I've been a fan since
the 40's when he had a late night radio broadcast from the 7-11 Club in Hollywierd.

You sound like my dad, clint, who was turned on to NKC as a teenager in Los Angeles in the 40s. Dad saw Cole perform many times in that era.

[John P. Cooper]

They had a clip of him singing "Autumn Leaves" in Japanese. Unique.