Nat King Cole – Easy Listenin’ Blues (piano sheet music)

Nat King Cole

(Nathaniel Adams Cole; Montgomery, 1919 – Santa Monica, 1965) American singer. The son of a Baptist minister, he grew up in the city of Chicago, where he studied piano. His first recordings date from 1936, still as a jazz pianist with the King Cole Trio, a group that achieved some fame in the forties and with which he anticipated some aspects of Charlie Parker’s bebop.

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His solo career began in 1948, when the formation was dissolved. Difficult to place in a specific style, Nat King Cole played various styles of music and, following a trip to South America in which he collected different musical influences in different languages, he added Latin songs to his repertoire.

The list of songs that he came to popularize, both in the United States and in Latin America and Europe, is endless. His last success was the most curious, a ‘remaster’ of the song Unforgettable in a duet with his daughter Nathalie when he had already died. In addition to the aforementioned, songs like Nature boy, Mona Lisa, Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps and Anxiety are part of his most celebrated albums.

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The North American musical magazine ‘Metronome’ was published from 1881 to 1961. In the period between 1929-1961, it carried out an annual survey among its readers so that they could vote for the musicians they considered best on their different instruments, including singers. In many cases, he organized the ‘Metronome All Star Band’ in which the musicians who had been chosen participated and recorded two songs.

In 1946, Nat King Cole was voted the best pianist, Eddie Safranski, double bassist, Buddy Rich, drummer, Bob Ahern, guitarist, Charlie Shavers, trumpeter, Lawrence Brown, trombonist, Johnny Hodges, alto sax, Coleman Hawkins, tenor sax , Harry Carney, baritone sax, Sy Oliver, arranger, Frank Sinatra, male vocalist and female June Christy.
The recording was produced on December 15, 1946, at the Columbia label studios in New York. The songs were ‘Nat meets June’ and ‘Sweet Lorraine’ some of Nat Cole’s hits. This time it was sung by Fran Sinatra.

In late 1951, Nat King Cole broke up his trio and became a Sinatra-esque crooner. Great orchestras, great arrangers, great success, great wads of dollar bills… Nat King Cole became one of the greatest singers to be found on that fuzzy line between jazz and pop music. The name of Nat King Cole was known internationally, and he also managed to be admired and loved by thousands of fans. Not to mention the following he gained when he performed popular Hispanic songs sung in Spanish.

In 1955, Nat King Cole surprised us with seven recording sessions in which he recorded 28 songs playing exclusively on the piano and surrounded by the orchestras and arrangers that he had at his disposal whenever he sang. The jazz pianist who remained somewhat asleep inside him came out again, how could it be otherwise.

On July 11, 1955, Nat Cole with the arrangements and the Nelson Riddle orchestra recorded three songs, including the titled ‘Taking a chance of love’, a standard composed by Vernon Duke with lyrics by Ted Fetter and John Latouche in 1949.

If in the credits of a record you see that the pianist’s name is Aye Guy or Shorty Nadine, these two names are two pseudonyms that Nat King Cole used to play with his friends when they asked him to, but for contractual reasons he had to hide.