Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. That Ain't Right
2. All For You
3. I'm Lost
4. Straighten Up and Fly Right
5. Gee Baby, Aint I Good To You?
6. If You Can't Smile And Say Yes
7. Sweet Lorraine
8. It's Only A Paper Moon
9. I (Just) Can't See For Lookin'
10. I Realize Now
11. I'm A Shy Guy
12. Don't Blame Me
13. Come To Baby, Do
14. The Frim Fram Sauce
15. (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66
16. You Call It Madness (But I Call It Love)
17. The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You)
18. (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons
19. You Don't Learn That in School
20. Meet Me at No Special Place (And I'll Be There)
21. What'll I Do?
22. Kee-Mo Ky-Mo (The Magic Song)
23. Nature Boy
24. Little Girl
25. A Boy From Texas - A Girl From Tennessee
26. Lost April

Disc 2:

1. My Mother Told Me
2. Exactly Like You
3. I Almost Lost My Mind
4. Always You
5. Mona Lisa
6. Orange Colored Sky
7. Jet
8. Too Young
9. Because of Rain
10. Red Sails in the Sunset
11. Unforgettable
12. Walkin' My Baby Back Home
13. Walkin'
14. The Ruby and the Pearl
15. Somewhere Along the Way
16. Funny (Not Much)
17. Can't I?
18. Don't Let Your Eyes Go Shopping...
19. Strange
20. Because You're Mine
21. I'm Never Satisfied
22. Faith Can Move Mountains
23. Mother Nature and Father Time
24. Pretend
25. A Fool Was I
26. Lover Come Back to Me

Disc 3:

1. If Love is Good to Me
2. Tenderly
3. Return to Paradise
4. Make Her Mine
5. I Am in Love
6. Why
7. Darling Je Vous Aime Beaucoup
8. Answer Me, My Love
9. Alone Too Long
10. It Happens to Be Me
11. Unbelievable
12. Haji Baba (Persian Lament)
13. Smile
14. My One Sin (In Life)
15. The Sand and the Sea
16. A Blossom Fell
17. Forgive My Heart
18. If I May
19. Someone You Love
20. Ask Me
21. Too Young to Go Steady
22. Dreams Can Tell a Lie
23. My Personal Possession
24. That's All There Is to That
25. Night Lights
26. To the Ends of the Earth

Disc 4:

1. Ballerina
2. Stardust
3. When I Fall in Love
4. With You on My Mind
5. Send for Me
6. Angel Smile
7. Looking Back
8. Come Closer to Me (Acercate Mas)
9. Quizas, Quizas, Quizas (Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps)
10. Non Dimenticar
11. You Made Me Love You
12. That's You
13. Midnight Flyer
14. My Love
15. Let True Love Begin
16. Let There Be Love
17. Dear Lonely Hearts
18. Ramblin' Rose
19. Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer
20. That Sunday, That Summer
21. I Don't Want to Be Hurt Anymore
22. L-O-V-E
23. The Christmas Song
24. L-O-V-E (medley in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian & Japanese) (Bonus Track)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45466 in Music
• Released on: 2003-11-04
• Number of discs: 4
• Formats: Box set, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .98 pounds

Customer Reviews

Bear Family, where are you?
If you're a die hard collector of Nat "King" Cole recordings you may look at the contents of this collection and fantasize about finally having stereo versions of some of his 60's material that has NEVER been released on LP or CD in stereo. Well, forget it. Only two tracks on cd four ("Let There Be Love" and "Dear Lonely Hearts") are in stereo. Not even "Stardust" and "When I Fall In Love" which were among the first tracks recorded by Capitol in stereo are in stereo here! In all fairness it should be mentioned that they did go back to the original masters for "You Made Me Love You" and "Let True Love Begin" instead of using the putrid David Cavanaugh rhythm track versions we've been stuck with since Mr. Cole's death but they're not in stereo. In fact, that in itself is ironic because the notes include a picture of the stereo EP that contained "You Made Me Love You"! As for the rest, you probably have everything on cd one because you probably have the Mosaic box. There are 4 or 5 nice rarities on cds two and three but you've got everything else. When oh when will Bear Family in Germany step in and do for Nat "King" Cole and Perry Como what they did for Dean Martin, Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney etc.? We seem to be incapable of it in the US.

WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT...
Nat King Cole was one of the top performers of the 20th century, but it seems like only Capitol fails to realise that. They are the guardians of his musical legacy, the ones that have the responsibility of making his music live on well into the 21st century, and what do they give us? Compilation after compilation of previously released material (when hundreds of unreleased tracks still lay dormant in their vaults),and when they finally come up with an interesting project, they mess it up with average sound quality!

I wouldn't quite agree with the notion, expressed by another reviewer, that Capitol should leave the Nat Cole material solely in the hands of their Capitol Jazz label... Capitol Jazz has excellent releases, liner notes, packaging, etc. (The 'Billy May sessions' 2-CD set, for instance, is brilliant), but it doesn't mean that plain Capitol isn't capable of equaling that quality, even surpassing it, given the right budget and an able team of archivists and reviewers (the 'Complete Capitol Singles' by Sinatra is a case in point). Only problem is, Sinatra sells more than Cole, and so they refuse to invest the same amount of money on an artist that is not so "cost-efficient"...

What a disgrace that they forgot where they come from... Capitol Tower, the symbol in their logo and headquarters for more than half a century, was described at its creation as "the house that Nat Cole built", referring to the huge popularity of his Trio recordings that gave the label its biggest revenue in the 1940s.

The Nat King Cole catalog on Capitol has been artificially divided between the two labels. Why not leave the Trio era recordings to Capitol Jazz and the later, solo recordings to the main label? After all, they are exactly in the same vein as the Sinatra recordings of the same period!

As for this here collection, I still dream of two separate singles sets: 'the Trio years'containing all Trio single sides, and 'the Solo years', covering the second half of his career. Stereo recordings whenever possible, all the sides (there were quite a few, but real fans would agree to pay a little more for it). Not only Nat deserves this, but his fans do, too... and the 21st century music listeners deserve to discover the legacy of one of the most extraordinary vocalists and pianists of all time.

Where's the stereo, WHERE'S THE STEREO?!!
First a little background on this set. Beginning with the stereo era in the late 1950's and early '60's, record labels including Capitol began offering most albums in both stereo and monaural, until stereo proved more popular and monaural was phased out altogether in the late 1960's. The same held true for 45 rpm singles, but most teens purchased the mono 45rpm records, since they were cheaper, and closer to what they heard on AM transistor radios. For the monaural releases, most record labels either mixed down the stereo versions into a flat mono track, or simply pulled the right or left stereo channel, and ran it straight on the 45, leaving a much different sounding version that the stereo versions. Capitol did both. Nat King Cole: the Classic Singles, offers us those monaural singles, for the most part as they sounded as 78 and 45 rpm single records. Monaural recordings can sound very good, if done correctly. For the first three discs of this set, that is the case. Some of the mastering on the early to mid 50's singles with Cole and Nelson Riddle, really sparkle. However it's the fourth disc with which I have the problem. The producer, despite his oath in the booklet to find the best source material possible, has chosen to use the mono mixes of all of Cole's material, even tracks that were originally recorded in stereo. There are many reasons why he/she may have done this. Perhaps to stay with the "singles" theme and keep the songs sounding as they did when released on vinyl. If that's the case, why did the producer choose the stereo versions (and bad ones at that) of Let There Be Love, and Dear Lonely Hearts? Judging by the research that went in to the booklet that accompanies this set, I hardly think ignorance played a role in this. I'm sure the producer knew full well that there were stereo mixes of these songs out there. Contrary to what another reviewer said here, the point of purchasing a 70-dollar CD set *IS* to get the best sounding material available. While it's interesting to hear how some of these songs were mixed to mono, those tinny, shallow, flat recordings are not what I want to hear, and not what I expect from a release of this caliber. Some of these songs, When I Fall In Love, and Looking Back for instance, sound completely different than they did on stereo lp or previous CD releases. This set is certainly not alone in that respect. EMI CD releases from England have been substituting Mono masters for Stereo ones on Cole albums for years. Why, I have no idea. Considering Nat Cole recorded prolifically for Capitol for more than 20 years, I find it sad that so little of his work remains in print. In the past 20 years Capitol and EMI have reissued nearly all of Cole's albums on CD at one time or another. But many including "Love", "Ballads Of the Day", "St Louis Blues" "To Whom It May Concern" and "Wild Is Love" were deleted from Capitol's catalog within months of release, and to date nearly all are completely out of print. "Night Lights" released just five years ago, is also out of print. I hope that Collector's Choice Music leases the Cole masters and turns out a complete, album by album release of Cole's monstrous catalog, as they did for Dean Martin recently. That way we won't have to suffer through any more piecemeal releases from Capitol EMI.