Customer Reviews
nat king cole the legend what a collection!! - By: Mr. S. L. Smith, 19 Aug 2008 
this is a an amazeing collection by nat king cole this is the best best of collection but he has a few essential albums too like after midnight sessions & love is the thing there fab & of course his christmas album buy them all there fab!!
nat is the king - By: P. Newson, 13 Sep 2007 
This is an excellent collectin of Nat King Coles work including the Nat King Cole Trio. Great versions of "It's All In The Game" & "Love Letters". Obviously there are the classics which include "When I Fall In Love", "Smile" (1961 version) & both versions of "Unforgettable". A must for anyone who wants to discover the unforgettable Nat King Cole
Not the same album universally . - By: Graham W. Swift, 05 Jan 2006 This is an excellent compilation covering recordings over a number of years , most of his well-known tracks , & with the re-mastered Unforgettable with the addition of Natalie Cole . However it does seem strange that this album is released alsoin the USA with different tracks , two of which should have been on this album . Record ( sorry , CD ) producers are strange animalsin this respect .
Peerless - By: Mr. R. B. Ager, 07 Mar 2005 Nat King Cole's singing, his range, tone, diction & phrasing, not to mention the quality of the arrangements & backing, be they the Nat King Cole Trio or Nelson Riddle's full orchestra, are all of what today's young pretenders strive to achieve. And good as some of them are, you only have to play this album, or any of the many others of his that are available, to realise that they have a long way to go to come anywhere near.
Released to mark the 40th anniversary of his death, &in tandem with a DVD & 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 & precious little detail about the music, & the tracklisting neglects to give any recording dates, which would have been helpful because they are notin chronological order - but it does show which tracks are mono & 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 & 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 & love. It's not all balladry, though, & later on there is a taste of more upbeat material, & it's nice to see the inclusion of some neglected classics like "Send For Me" & "Orange Coloured Sky" before things are wound up with his full & unsurpassed reading of Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust".
A couple of the tracks are alternative recordings to those normally heard - "Love Letters" & "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, & evens out the sound-level variations between tracks.
Whatever little quibbles I have about the packaging of the product, the man's singing & music are what matters, & 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, & it was very well received.
Not definitive but a great collection - By: Peter Durward Harris, 02 Mar 2005 You'd need a boxed set of several CD's to contain all of Nat's great songs, but this collection is packed full of great music at a reasonable price.
In Britain, Nat is best known for When I fallin love, & 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 & 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 & dance, Mona Lisa, Unforgettable (here twice, once solo & once with his daughter), It's allin the game, Straighten up & fly right. On the street where you live, I love you for sentimental reasons, Autumn leaves, Love letters & 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.
