The World of Nat King Cole

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Released to mark the 40th anniversary of his death, and in tandem with a DVD and television documentary, the packaging of this collection inevitably has the marketing department's mark, as opposed to the enthusiast's, on it. The accompanying booklet contains an article by daughter Natalie that is nearly all waffle and precious little detail about the music, and the tracklisting neglects to give any recording dates, which would have been helpful because they are not in chronological order - but it does show which tracks are mono and which stereo, in case our ears couldn't work that out.

The album starts off with a bang, Billy May's vibrant big band arrangement and backing for "Let's Face The Music And Dance" making sure that everyone is awake, before settling down into the ballads that most people know and love. It's not all balladry, though, and later on there is a taste of more upbeat material, and it's nice to see the inclusion of some neglected classics like "Send For Me" and "Orange Coloured Sky" before things are wound up with his full and unsurpassed reading of Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust".

A couple of the tracks are alternative recordings to those normally heard - "Love Letters" and "Smile" - though to be fair, if you're not intimately familiar with them you won't notice. All of them, bar the engineered duet of "Unforgettable" with Natalie, have been digitally remastered; I remain unconvinced that this actually improves sound quality, but it does brighten up the backing instrumentation, and evens out the sound-level variations between tracks.

Whatever little quibbles I have about the packaging of the product, the man's singing and music are what matters, and they are five-star without question. It goes without saying that there is plenty more where this came from, as a browse of the listings will reveal. This does nicely though, especially as a present - I bought it for Mother's Day, and it was very well received.

In Britain, Nat is best known for When I fall in love, and it is inevitably included here. Beyond that's it's hard to single out tracks are they are all excellent. Ramblig rose, A blossom fell, Smile, Pretend and Somewhere along the way (all included here) were among Nat's other UK top ten hits, but he had others, not included here. Let there be love, which is here, just missed the UK top ten.

Apart from those UK hits, this compilation includes Nat's versions of classic songs such as Let's face the music and dance, Mona Lisa, Unforgettable (here twice, once solo and once with his daughter), It's all in the game, Straighten up and fly right. On the street where you live, I love you for sentimental reasons, Autumn leaves, Love letters and Stardust.

As an introduction to Nat's music, this is ideal. You're likely to end up buying more than one collection of Nat's music so don't worry about what's missing. Just enjoy what's here.

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