{"id":40767,"date":"2008-03-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/l-o-v-e\/"},"modified":"2008-03-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-01T00:00:00","slug":"l-o-v-e","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/l-o-v-e\/","title":{"rendered":"L-O-V-E"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\">This was the last Nat King Cole album ever released. That in and of itself is depressing; for my money, Cole was a better pop\/jazz singer than either Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett, and had he lived he would probably be\u2026I don\u2019t know, doing duets with Bono or something. As it is, Cole\u2019s work can be overlooked by fans of the swing\/jazz genre.\u00a0 Hopefully, that will change with the rerelease of his studio albums on CD, remastered with bonus material. <i>L-O-V-E<\/i> is the first of those I have had the pleasure to listen to, and\u2026well\u2026damn. This is sweet, gang.<o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">A little background is called for here. <i>L-O-V-E<\/i> \u00a0is a collection of songs that became pop standards when first released, a straight-ahead selection of romantic swing and jazz vocal selections with a judicious peppering of folk influences. Anyone with historical awareness larger than, say, a tree squirrel knows some of these songs, but Cole\u2019s magnificent vocals make them uniquely his. Better yet, the sterling arrangements of Ralph Carmichael make these songs elegant jazz instrumentals in their own right.<o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">There are, as I said, a lot of songs that most music fans will know, but Cole makes them his, effortlessly. \u201cMore\u201d becomes an almost triumphant expression of love, \u201cL-O-V-E\u201d is , as far as I\u2019m concerned, the definitive version, and \u201cGirl From Ipanema\u201d is delivered almost wistfully with Cole\u2019s expressive voice becoming gentle. Cole also worked his magic on some lesser-known standards: \u201cThanks To You,\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s Love,\u201d and \u201cThree Little Words\u201d are classics. The bonus tracks are interesting; the difficult \u201cMarnie\u201d is not, frankly, one of my favorite songs, but Cole does what he can with it. \u201cSilver Bird\u201d and \u201cA Rag, A Bone, and a Hank Of Hair\u201d show Cole experimenting with <st1:city><st1:place>Kingston<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> Trio-style folk, and while it\u2019s intriguing, it never really hits a groove. The highlight is \u201cMore and More Of Your Amor;\u201d Cole\u2019s Latin-influenced sound is playful, laced with horn flourishes.<o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><i>L-O-V-E<\/i> is an excellent collection of pop standards, delivered by the man I feel is one of the greatest traditional pop and jazz vocalists of the twentieth century. There are some miscues, but overall, this is a fitting tribute to a master\u2019s last work.<o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":29228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7950],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-40767","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-nat-king-cole","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40767"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}