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Home , Barbara McNair, Freddy Cole, Gene Lees, Lee Young, Maria Cole, Nelson Riddle

Gene Lees

Jazzletter PO Box 240= O'ai1 CA 93024-0240 March 2000 Vol. 19 No. 3

King Cole another, up to and including such junk as Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days ofSummer. It was a repertoire much closer to Part Three v ’s than Sinatra’s. _ It was about this -point that Nat advanced the career of a Rumor in the business always had it that Nat’s hunger for gifted arranger named . I have never told this hits was the consequence of Maria’s hunger for money. story before, but it is what Nat told me that day in Louisville. Epstein says, “Of course, she loved money and luxury and We must have been talking about arrangers. I have always security, but who doesn’t?” I been an admirer of great arranging and . There is an astonishing passage on page 294 ofEpstein’s Somehow Nelson Riddle’s name came up, perhaps in book: conversation about Sinatra. “Carol Cole remembers the day her father telephoned Nat said, “Frank didn’t discover Nelson Riddle. I did.” Capitol and the receptionist answered brightly, ‘Capitol In a corridor at in , a young man Records, Home of Elvis!’ And Nat said, trying to hide his approached him and said, “Mr. Cole, I’m an arranger, and I’d astonishment, ‘Excuse me?’ He had built the tower, but at like to write for you.” the moment Elvis was more important than he.” Cole, with what I can see in my mind was his manner of First: Nat and built that tower. unfailing politesse, said, “I’d like to hear your work.” Second: Anyone with an even rudimentary knowledge of “You’ve already recorded some of it,” the young man popular music in America knows that, excepting the early said, “but it didn’t have my name on it.” He had been sides he made for Sun Records, ’s entire body ghosting for someone else. ofrecorded work was for RCA Victor. What Nat really heard “What’s your name?” Nat asked. that day —- and I got the story from both and “Nelson Riddle.” Paul Weston — was “Capitol Records, home ofthe Beatles.” “Let’s have a talk,” Nat said. Nelson worked directly for There is a comparable mistake on page 86 of the book. him afier that, and then signed with Capitol Speaking of the store Glen Wallichs owned, Music City, and his career blossomed again, never to fade until he died; Epstein writes: “This was a record store, where Wallichs and Nelson Riddle became known as his arranger. soon began making his own records —— 78 rpm wax cylinders I could feel that the friendship between Sinatra and Nat — with a single microphone.” Cole was an uncomfortable one, even though Cole named Where did Epstein get that astonishing bit ofmisinfonna- Frank as his favorite singer in a Leonard Father survey,, and tion? fmally (in his soft way) said something a little testy. He said, Aha. On page 49 of the Leslie Gourse book, one finds “Do you want to know the difference between Frank and this: “In music city, which (Wallichs) ran with his brother, me? The band swings Frank. I swing the band.” the records were 78 rpm cylinders.” This is a classic example Every musician to whom I have ever told that seems to of the replication of errors, a replication that to some extent raise his eyebrows a little and say, “That’s right!” underlies Voltaire’s statement that history is an agreed-upon But while Sinatra, from the time he joined Capitol, set fiction. about recording the very finest songs in the American In fact, the cylinder record went out, as they say, with “popular” (to my mind, classic) repertoire, Cole continued to button shoes — almost at the same time. The first disc do a lot of bad songs. Not that Sinatra didn’t do a certain records were manufactured in 1894, and by about 1904, amount of trash — eventually including and cylinder recording had all but ceased. Oliver Read and — but the vast body of his work at Walter L. Welch wrote in From Tinfoil to Stereo: Evolution Capitol and, later, Reprise, comprises the truly great songs. ofthe Phonograph: Nat Cole left no such legacy. “Although musical cylinders were sold by Thomas A. He seemed to have a perpetual hunger for hits. Sinatra had Edison, Inc., until it retired from the field in 1929, the comparatively few real hits. His records sold big, but Cole’s ultimate doom of the cylinder had been sounded with the sales were massive, as he found one commercial hit after announcement of the Edison Diamond Disc Phonograph in

i l9l2.” Roland Gelatt, in The Fabulous Phonograph, cites wrong with good cocktail , and as the ritzy Rainbow the Milan recordings of Caruso in 1902 as the first fully Room-type decor on the original cover implies, this is just satisfactory disc recordings. By 1902, Columbia was market- about the cocktail-iest, lacking nothing except tinkly glasses ing its product in both disc and cylinder format. Roland and inebriated sophisticates trying to remember the words.” wrote: “Already (1902) a distinction had been drawn be- It is one of the finest Cole ever made. I acquired tween the disc public and the cylinder public: discs were it in as soon as it was issued. I listened to it so meant for the Main Street parlor, cylinders for the other side much that it lies deep in my subconscious. I keep a tape of it of the tracks.” in my car, even today. I know every note, every chord of it. Thomas A. Edison, who was a stubbom man, continued Donald Byrd said to me many years ago, “Alter all my years to make both cylinder and disc recordings, but his company in this business, I have concluded that the hardest thing to do retired entirely from the record business in 1929. (My thanks is play straight melody and get some feeling into it.” Listen to James T. Maher, the patron saint of everyone who writes to playing Danny Boy and you will know exactly about popular music andjazz in America, for researching the what he means. And thus it is with . It is subject for me.) a gentle, loving, introspective, beautiful examination of the I called Leslie Gourse about this odd error in her book, tunes, and all the glories of Cole’s piano-playing are on replicated by Epstein. “I wonder where I got that?” she said. display. That old question, “What would you take to Ten years after you write a book, it is hard to remember who a desert island with you if you could choose only one?” told you what. She will try to have the error corrected in the elicits from me without hesitation: “Nat Cole’s Penthouse new edition of her Cole biography. Serenade.” And I have taken it with me, to desert islands of Daniel Mark Epstein is at his most embarrassing when he the mind, and into dark nights of the heart. It is a master- dissertates, with unshakable aplomb, on technical matters of piece, a crown ofjewels in the history ofjazz, and because music. He talks about a flatted third chord. Other than a of its directness and deceptive simplicity it is terribly minor chord, I haven’t the slightest idea what he’s talking overlooked. about, and neither apparently has he. He talks about “Hebraic minor chords.” Is he trying to tell us the Jews have invented Steve McQueen said once in an interview that there was a minor chord that contains something other than a root, flat nothing hard about movie acting. He was probably right. The third, and fifih? And Epstein almost drools over Cole’s use movie industry has always taken in men and women who oftriplets, failing, apparently, to understand, that 12/8 is the have achieved fame in fields other than drama, including essence of melody-making. (He should try McCoy swimmers (Esther Williams, Buster Crabbe, Johnny Tyner.) Epstein surrounds commonplace musical terms like Weissmuller), a skater (Sonja Henie), football players, “pedal point” and “tenths” with quotation marks as if they dancers, and above all singers: , Rudy Vallee, are esoteric argot. One gets the feeling that he consulted Dick Powell, Tony Martin, Frank Sinatra, , people with at least a smattering of knowledge, took notes, Elvis Presley, Pat Boone, among them. That and passed their commentary off as his own without really makes a certain amount of sense: a singer’s job is to put over understanding it. He sounds like the dialogue in that French the emotional content of words. And some of those singers, “jazz” movie, Round Midnight, which makes you think that particularly Sinatra and Dick Powell, tumed into remarkably director and writer Bertrand Tavemier followed some jazz good actors. Nat Cole aspired to follow their example. musicians around, writing down what they said without But his position was not unlike that of Billy Eckstine. grasping it and using it in dialogue. . Eckstine first came to the attention of “the kids” — one of Marvin Cain, who went on to become president of whom was me — when he recorded with the Famous Music and is now retired, was unable to finish band. One of the times was Jelly Jelly, one of the most reading the book. I called him to check some of its “facts.” notoriously sexual of songs onceyou knew what “jelly” “It's bullshit,” he said, not being a man given to evasion. meant, with the line “jelly stays on my mind.” We didn’t “He talked to a lot of people who hardly even knew Nat.” know, not the white kids anyway. But he made his place in jazz history with an illustrious and seminal band ofhis On July 18, 1952, Cole went into the studio with a group that own, which had , Fats Navarro, Miles Davis, included Jolm Collins, guitar, Charlie Harris, bass, Jack Kenny Dorham, Gene Ammons, Dexter Gordon, Budd Costanzo, Latin percussion, and Bunny Shawker, drums. Johnson, Lucky Thompson, Frank Wess, , Leo They made an album of standards, which was Parker, Tommy Potter, and Art Blakey in its personnel. It issued as a ten-inch LP called Penthouse Serenade. lasted only three years. Eckstine surrendered to the inevita- In his notes to the Mosaic boxed set, Will Friedwald, with ble, and folded it to continue as a solo singer. With his his usual wall-eyed perception, writes “There’s nothing striking good looks and rich baritone, he became a hit on the newly-forrned MGM label, with which he signed 1947. Meanwhile, his stardom as a singer just kept growing: he But he said later, not without bittemess, that it was drew an audience of60,000 in a football stadium. obvious to him that the movies were closed to him because wanted to have Nat as a guest on her televi- of his color. His appeal to women made many white men sion show. Chevrolet, her sponsor, would not allow it: they uncomfortable. He said that given the attitude of movie- Wouldn’t have her standing next to a black man. Similarly, theater owners in the South, no studio would take a chance Bell Telephone didn’t want Herb Ellis and on on putting him in a picture as a romantic lead. In case you camera together in its television show. , her haven’t noticed, to this day television commercials remain manager, battled them and they agreed to let them appear segregated. The one black man in a crowd at a party, what together. The technicians put so much gel on the lens that calls the TTS, standing for Token Television you couldn’t recognize Ellis. Spook, always has a black wife. And the movies have treated But late in 1965, Carlos Gastel negotiated a deal to have the very idea of a black man and white woman rarely and Cole star in his own TV series on NBC. The show went on cautiously, as witness Love Field. Indeed, the idea of a the air in November, 1956, a sustaining fifteen-minute relationship between a white and an Indian, though such broadcast at 7:30 p.m. The advertising salesmen were marriages were common in the west, was taboo for years, unenthusiastic, even though Cole was perfect for television. finally starting to crumble with Broken Arrow in 1950. Like Perry Como, a huge success in the medium, he was Eckstine’s career was confined to records and night clubs. effective precisely because his projected personality was And Nat Cole would soon fmd there were limitations to his quiet, warm, and intimate. By 1957, the show was the most career too. successful in television. But still the advertisers held back. In 1953, he appeared on a 1953 Lux Video Theater in a The show was expanded to a half hour. Cole delivered role supporting Dick Haymes. He played, logically enough, himself of a widely-quoted epigram: “Madison Avenue is a piano player. He played a small role in a film called Small afraid of the dark.” His guest stars included Mel Tormé, Town Girl, and then appeared in a 1955 short about himself Tony Martin, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Belafonte, called The Story. He stirred no critical Julius La Rosa, and more, and they appeared for scale —— or acclaim. Leslie Gourse wrote: “He seemed to be too polite rather, for him. and shy to try to emote or plumb the emotional depths ofthe I asked La Rosa about that appearance. “Nat couldn’t character he was portraying.” That is true ofhis singing, too. have been nicer,” Julie said. “As a thank you, he gave me a It is dramatic depth that makes Sinatra’s singing so compel- lovely white sweater with blue trimming which I treasured ling; it is not drama but sheer musicality that makes Cole’s until it almost fell apart. He was such a gentle man. Nelson singing mesmerizing. His daughter is the better dramatic Riddle was the orchestra leader. Peggy Lee was the other lyric reader. guest! I was performing with three giants I’d paid to seejust He appeared as a member ofthe French Foreign Legion a few years before! And they made me feel like I belonged, in Indochina in China Gate, which starred Gene Barry and which of course I didn’t really.” Angie Dickinson. I thought he was rather good in it. Then he Throughout 1957, NBC kept the show on the air. Though was cast as W.C. Handy in St. Louis Blues. Marvin Cane its ratings steadily improved; the sponsors it needed did not visited him on the set. Nat told him he found movie-making materialize. Afier losing nearly half a million dollars on the frustrating, since he was not in control, as he was in a show, NBC decided to move it to the deadly slot of7 p.m. on recording studio. Marvin said,_“Well, you’re in the movie Saturday. Cole declined to make the move. business.” Steve Allen tells me that NBC some years ago needed Nat said, “Yeah, but what the hell am I doing here?” storage space in its facility and destroyed the Marvin said, “You’re becoming a movie star.” r kinescopes of some of its classic shows, including many of The film was bad at the root. The script was poor, and far his own Tonight shows with precious footage on Charlie from factual. Bosley Crowther wrote in , Parker, Thelonious Monk, and others ofthe jazz musicians “Mr. Cole simply lumbers through the role ofa harassedjazz whose cause he was forever pushing. About a third of his , looking dumb and uncomfortable.” shows survive, and there are thirty segments of The Nat King “Cole,” Leslie Gourse wrote, “always provided an Cole Show, parts ofwhich are seen on TV fi'om time to time. exquisite relief and lifi for the films the films in which he One ofthe things you noticed is Cole’s remarkable grace of sang —— Blue Gardenia, for one. Sometimes his singing was movement. He was a natural for television. . the only bright moment in a fihn. Throughout Cat Ballou in In his statement to the New York Times announcing the 1965, heand Stubby Kay augmented the amusing story . . .” end of the show, Cole said, “There won’t be shows starring Ultimately, the movies were to prove a deep disappoint- Negroes soon.” ment, but not so bitter a one as his television experience. Julius La Rosa offered a footnote to this tale: “By the

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way, I recall that on a Dinah Shore show, Ella Fitzgerald was diversion for Cole, the reliable balm of erotic adventure, had the other guest. At one point I put my arms over Dinah’s and begun to spin out of control and become an obsession. He Ella’s shoulders. I got mail denouncing me for putting my really loved this girl, who was so different from his wife in arm around ‘that nigger.’ Incredible, no? And that was in the every way, so gentle, so simple, so undemanding. (She) was mid-fifties.” funny and she had quiet courage; she had made the great crossover from culture to culture, language to language. And The snubs continued. Cole had sung for President Eisen- who knows what other changes and challenges she might hower, and was invited to sing for the Queen of England have the strength of character to endure? In the unreal erotic during a pending European tour (and he would soon sing at world oftheir hours alone together Cole was able to imagine the inauguration of his friend John F. Kennedy) but the a future free ofall that weighted him down—the expectations Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco wouldn’t let him ofhis children, parents, the press, his public, his people, who perform there, its manager telling the press: “No assumption looked to him for leadership, wanted him to be a saint; above on the man’s color. We just don’t want the class of people all he imagined freedom from his wife, who seemed to him, Cole attracts.” Though the Civic Auditorium was available in his befuddlement, to be the warden ofthis prison, his life.” to him, Cole canceled San Francisco entirely. Where did Epstein get that “infonnation”? From a ouija He made a “concept” album called , songs board? about a man’s search for love, or more precisely, sex. Some Cole by then had lung cancer, and it was progressing of his associates, including Lee Young, didn’t like it. rapidly. He played the Copacabana in New York. Epstein Gradually the album evolved into an idea for a Broadway says Maria did what “any proud, furious wife with five show. Capitol Records put up $75,000, and Cole put at least children and some cash does when her husband is thinking $75,000 of his money into it. The show, with an interracial of leaving her for another woman,” she put a private detec- cast that included Barbara McNair, opened in Denver tive on the case, and they came away from the girl’s apart- October 17, 1960, to bad reviews. It moved on to San ment “with enough billets-doux and mementos to fry King Francisco, where it got even worse reviews. Cole was Cole in the divorce courts, if Maria took a fancy to do it. In determined to get it to Broadway, in one form or another, but Califomia, she and the kids would get everything he had.” eventually it went down, taking a great deal of his money Cole at last was hospitalized for cobalt treatments in Los with it. Angeles. Of Maria, Epstein writes: “As magnificent as she Daniel Mark Epstein takes a wallowing interest in Cole’s had been in love, in devotion, in fighting for her husband’s sex life, indeed in seemingly everyone’s sex life. What is his career and their rights to happiness, now she was no less problem? His fascination with the quantity of women that a magnificent.” major male star is able to attract infuses the whole book. He In other words, despite all his gratuitous flattery of her says, “As the chief spokesman for romantic love in the early through the book, he paints her as an absolute barracuda. She 1960, it was inevitable that Cole would sample some ofwhat blocked his calls at the hospital’s telephone switchboard, he he was selling.” And he quotes a press agent who traveled says, to make sure the girl could not call the dying man. She with Cole: “Nat was very discreet. He was not the sort of guy compiled a list of everyone she thought might have abetted who would say, arriving in a city, ‘Hey, let’s get some girls Nat’s love affair, and made sure they were never able to and have a party.’” speak to their dying friend, no matter what consolation that That’s right. Arriving in Louisville, he spent the day with might have given him. And then she pulled a master stroke. me. Do you remember the harrowing passage at the end of But the most distasteful material in the book concems Orwell’s I984, wherein the authorities, to destroy the Nat’s last love affair. It was with a young Swedish chorus imprisoned Winston Smith’s love for the girl, resort to the girl he had met doing a review called Sights and Sounds that thing that is his greatest phobic fear: a rat? They bring one in he did in 1963, hoping still to get to Broadway. Epstein calls a cage, prepared to loose the rat on his eye. He realizes that her a “dreamy delight.” He says she had “the spiritual look must not only say he no longer loved the girl, he must stop of a dream in the twilight between sleep and waking.” loving her. And he does. Leslie Gourse mentions this relationship in her book, too. got a call from the girl, telling her that she “But,” Leslie told me, “she asked that I not use her name, loved Nat and Nat loved her, and asking Maria to give him and I didn’t.” a divorce. Pathetic. Epstein has no such discretion: he names her. And he Cole was by now spending his days in a hospital rocking says, “Anyway, there were plenty of opportunities for (her) chair. The mail from well-wishers poured in. So did the to get Cole alone in a room as the show toured the country flowers. “Maria,” Epstein writes, “came marching dovsm the late in 1963. And by early spring of 1964, what started as a corridor of the North Wing on the sixth floor of St. John’s Hospital, burst into her husband’s room, and lit into him as for two or three hours. if the two of them were in their twenties.”. We all marveled at Cole’s effortless, unceasing swing. He She demanded the girl’s phone number. She dialed it, and has the most magnificent time of any musician I’ve ever handed Nat the phone, and made him tell the girl, in his heard, and ’s own time is a pretty formidable feeble voice, that it was over between them. phenomenon. Nat Cole’s lefl lung was removed on January 25. He died Roger said. “You are told in the arts that you have to on the moming of February l5, 1965. strive to get out of your own way. He doesn’t even have to told me that Nat’s death was devastating to FY-” him. He said, “Prior to that, two weeks before, my dad died “And there’s the gentleness. The tendemess. He has a way with complications ofa heart ailment. So we were all in state ofcaressing the piano.” of shock for a long while. I said, “Nat Cole never shouts. Not in his singing, not in “I haven’t smoked now in many years, and I don’t think his playing, not even in his life.” about cigarets. I quit before Nat died. I was at the hospital in “That’s a good way to put it,” Roger said, and, after a few Santa Monica. I’d been coughing and had a bronchial more minutes of listening, “The musicality is just there. It’s condition, and Nat said, ‘Man, you ought to quit smoking.’ understood. It’s an assumption. His playing sparkles. And it And I said I would. seems effortless. It’s not filled with ego and the kinds of “Later on, I picked Natalie up from the airport. She was thing you’ve heard for the last thirty-five years, especially coming home from school. She was twelve or thirteen years the more modem angular players, whether it be anger or old. I lit a cigaret, and she said, ‘I thought you told Daddy wherever they think they’re coming from emotionally. The you were going to stop smoking.’ So I said, ‘Okay,’ and push, and the stress in society that’s produced that kind of threw the cigaret out the window. I haven’t smoked since.” playing. It’s not there.” Debbie said, “His singing had a timeless charm — the Eighteen years later, in 1993, Roger Kellaway was sitting at way he presented his times, the way he got the emotion the piano in Studio One at Westem in Los Angles, prior to a across. There is something so lovable about his voice. And record date with that same , charts by Marty his piano playing really swrmg. His block chord voicings had Parch. She was now forty-three years old. ~ a unique sound, a distinct tone. The way he backed himself “I was sitting at the piano, just fiddling around," Roger up as a singer at the piano was so tastefiil. The way he would said. “These hands touched my shoulders and a warmth filled sing and just at the right time, place the right figure to my entire body. I couldn’t believe it. I tumed around, and it complement his singing. It sounded effortless. I don’t see was her. And that’s how we first met. She didn’t know me at how it could be done better. all. But now that I think about it, wasn’t that the logical thing “Another thing I’ve noticed. I’ve been researching tunes for her to do? Because I was the pianist. g with Rhythm changes for some of my students. Nat Cole did “It was her Take a Look album. We did the verses to three a lot oftunes based on I Got Rhythm. He seemed to really do songs on that one session, just she and I. It was so wonderful a large tribute to Gershwin. I’m an Errand Boyfor Rhythm, to work with a singer who knew those kinds of songs, that Hit that Jive Jack, the list goes on and on.” concept. I was able to breathe with her, without even know- I read them some ofthe 1991 notes, by pianist Dick Katz, ing her. She invited me lunch. I congratulated her on being for the Mosaic reissue ofthe Cole Capitol piano records. He a singer who understood verses, and she said, ‘Well of wrote: “His deep groove, harmonic awareness, supple course I do. My dad took me everywhere.’ That’s as close as phrasing, touch, dynamics, taste, and just plain delicious I’m going to get to Nat Cole.” music had a profound effect on . . . Oscar Peterson, Hank I said, “I think she’s one of the best singers we have.” Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Al Haig, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, “Well I think so too.” Ahmad Jamal, Monty Alexander, and many others, including Listening to the entire Mosaic collection ofNat Cole was myself.” a revelatory experience. Now I wanted Roger to listen to “And you,” I told Roger. some of it with me. There are few musical experiences that “But I never heard as much of Nat Cole as I might have either of us has that we do not in some way share. So I wanted. I got his influence through Oscar Peterson, and of invited him to do some listening with me. I also invited course Oscar added all that power.” He listened to Nat Cole Debbie Denke, a fine pianist and teacher who lives in Santa some more and then said, “When you hear something like Barbara. She is the author of a very good book titled The this, don’t you think to yourself, ‘Boy, would I like to hang Aspiring Jazz Pianist, published by Hal Leonard, accompa- out with that person! ”’ nied by an illustrative CD, and available through Amazon “And I once did,” I said. “A long time ago.” and Barnes and Noble. She and Roger and I listened to Cole )

I can almost see that room in the Seelbach. I assumed that ing at Me. Sometimes I’m Happy is good too. Stuff Smith Nat had sent for room service, rather than going to the and Nat were friends fiom back in . I play that album restaurant, in order to assure privacy for my interview. And all the time.” perhaps that had something to do with it. So do I. That and Penthouse Serenade. I carry them on But long afterwards, it occurred to me that he probably tape in the car. did it because he knew that if he could now get into a The personnel of Afler Midnight comprises Nat, Jolm Louisville hotel, where no one could see him, he and I would Collins on guitar, Charlie Harris on bass, and Lee Young on still not be allowed into its restaurant, or any other decent drums. On some tracks, the guest soloist is Stuff Smith on restaurant in town. The voters march in Montgomery, , on , or Willie Smith on alto Alabama, had not even happened yet. . The privacy was to my advantage, in the end: I had that The King Cole Trio recordings are set pieces. He did the precious time alone with him, and I stayed the day with him tunes pretty much the same way each time, even to the vocal until concert time. I remember being amazed that he would phrasing. In one trio session, , he makes give so much time to me, a no one. exactly the same allusion at the start of the second eight to Why would he do that? Lover Come Back to Me as he does in a second take that was “He was that way,” Freddy Cole told me. “He’d talk to a unissued. But to hear him blowing, one can tum to the Jazz larnp-post.” at the Philharmonic recording he did for Norman Granz, an I have spent two months or so now studying his life and album he made with , and After Midnight. his work, sometimes analyzing it at the piano. l have a whole After that album, he recorded one more jazz session, in new appreciation ofhim, and it will never leave me. Devoid New York, on March 22, 1961. Then his piano falls silent. of ostentation or pretense, he was truly a genius musician. I idolized him when I was a kid. I guess I still do. His life strikes me, taken in sum, as sad, for all its great moments. He was thwarted at so many tums. Certainly his The Epstein book is not only bad and inaccurate history, it life was not the field of flowers I would have wished for so amounts to desecration. How could Farrar, Straus and magnificent a musician, so humane a man. After the Giroux, with its distinguished literary history, have pub- Birmingham incident, his deportment prompted the Chicago lished this book? The company also published Lush Life, Defender to thunder: “We wonder if Nat Cole shared the David Hajdu's imperfect but quite good biography of Billy humiliation of the hundreds of his Negro fans who had to Strayhom. Nat Cole and his work deserved at least its equal. stand outdoors and wait while whites inside yelled ‘Go I was not one of those who questioned Cole’s tuming to home, nigger!’ and attacked him as he performed. We hope singing. I loved his singing. I doubt that I had the courage to Cole has learned his lesson.” tell him I was secretly writing songs. One of my regrets is Cole told a reporter, “I’m not mad at a soul.” He caught that I never got to hear him do one ofmine. (Freddy did one, hell for that one. though.) I do remember asking him why, in his concert and Thurgood Marshall, who was then chief counsel for the nightclub performances, he rarely accompanied himselfnow. NAACP, said, “All Cole needs to complete his role as an “Because when you sing and play at the same time,” he Uncle Tom is a banjo.” said, “you're dividing your attention. You sing better if you It is a detestable, execrable remark. It is beyond our don't play, and you play better if you don't sing.” powers to estimate how much Nat Cole did for “racial Maybe. But he was magnificent at self-accompanirnent. relations” in the United States by the graciousness of his I remember saying that I hoped he would not stop record- comportment, the sofiness ofhis mamrer, and the decency of ing jazz albums entirely. And he said, “As a matter of fact, his example. It still shines. I’m thinking about doing one soon.” I cannot remember who told me this story: One ofthe good things I got out ofEpstein’s book was the He was playing the Fontainbleu. A little white girl got knowledge that after that tour, and that grim experience in away from her parents and toddled onto the stage while he Birmingham, he went home to and began to was singing. A kind of hush seized the audience. This was practice. He practiced all through June, and then in July Miami, and Miami was one of the most racist cities in called a session. America. “Nat loved to be in the studio,” Freddy told me. “He just She drew closer to him. Nat had someone bring him a couldn’t sit still. He’d be off for a couple ofweeks, and he’d chair. He sat down, took the little girl on his lap, and sang call the guys. That’s how that Afler Midnight album came to her to sleep. be made. They were just foolin’ around. My favorite in that Copyright 2000 by Gene Lees album is Blame It on My Youth. That one and You ’re Look-

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