Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole-Wow! eBook

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Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole

Author(s): Will Friedwald (Author)

Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication Date: May 13, 2020
Language: English
Print length: 652 pages
ISBN-10: 0190882042
ISBN-13: 9780190882044

Book Description

One of the most popular and memorable American musicians of the 20th century, Nat King Cole (1919-65) is remembered today as both a pianist and a singer, a feat rarely accomplished in the world of popular music. Now, in this complete life and times biography, author Will Friedwald offers a new take on this fascinating musician, framing him first as a bandleader and then as a star. In Cole’s early phase, Friedwald explains, his primary task of keeping his trio going was just as much of a focus for him as his own playing and singing, always a collective or group performance. In the second act, Cole’s collaborators were more likely to be arranger-conductors like Nelson Riddle and Gordon Jenkins, rather than his sidemen on bass and guitar. In the first act, his sidemen were equals, in the second phase, his collaborators were tasked exclusively with putting the focus on him, making him sound good, while being largely invisible themselves.

Friedwald brings his full musical knowledge to bear in putting the man in the work, demonstrating how this duality appears over and over again in Cole’s life and career: jazz vs. pop, solo vs. trio, piano vs. voice, wife number one (Nadine) vs. wife number two (Maria), the good songs vs. the less-than-good songs, the rhythm numbers vs. the ballads, the funny songs and novelties vs. the “serious” songs of love and loss, Cole as an advocate for the Great American Songbook vs. Cole the intrepid explorer of other options: world music, rhythm & blues, country & western. Cole was different from his contemporaries in other ways; for roughly ten years after the war, the majority of hitmakers on the pop charts were veterans of the big band experience, from Sinatra on down.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The first factually reliable primary-source biography of the singer-instrumentalist.” — Terry Teachout, Commentary.org

“Friedwald wonderfully captures Cole and his career with smooth and captivating prose in this definitive biography.” — Publishers Weekly

“Nat Cole is still such an ineffably engaging singer that it is easy to forget just how protean and important a musician he was — originating new styles of be-bop-to-modern jazz piano; creating with his trio a template for R&B; renewing he American song book in its eclipse; becoming one of the first true cross-over artists, and not least, ending as a quiet hero of the civil rights movement. Artists as different as Bill Evans, Chuck Berry, and Sam Cooke all owe him an incalculable debt. Will Friedwald’s biography captures each of these faces of Cole, and does so with a delightful mix of scholarly dedication and interpretive verve. This is certainly the best book that anyone will write about Nat King Cole.” — Adam Gopnik

About the Author

Will Friedwald writes about music and popular culture for The Wall Street Journal as well as for magazines such as Vanity Fair. He is also the associate producer and writer of Michael Feinstein’s Jazz and Popular Song Series at Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has produced shows for Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, The Mabel Mercer Foundation Cabaret Convention at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall, 54 Below, Urban Stages, The Friars Club, and elsewhere.

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Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole

Book Description

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

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