CoronaVinyl Day 81 (Crooners): Love Is The Thing by Nat King Cole

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "crooners," but what's a crooner?  When I hear the word "crooner," I generally think of someone who started in the pre-rock and roll era, sang jazz or standards, had a smooth voice, and generally steered clear of anything that could be considered rock and roll (even if they overlapped with the rock and roll era).  The names that come to mind are Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Perry Como, and Bing Crosby -- and, in more recent times, Michael Bublé.

I have a couple crooner albums, but I am going with Nat King Cole's 1957 album, Love Is The Thing, which is an album of 12 standards about love.  A fellow Chicagoan, Cole was one of pop music's biggest names in the '40s and '50s (and even into the '60s).  He was one of the first black artists to have crossover success with white audiences, and he was the first African-American to host a TV show in the U.S., The Nat King Cole Show, which debuted in 1956.  All in all, he had over 80 songs that reached the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and its predecessor charts), including 21 Top 10 songs and 4 #1s.  Of course, his rendition of "The Christmas Song" remains one of the most beloved holiday songs of all-time, and it has ranked in the Top 5 on the Billboard Holiday chart each year since the chart's inception in 2011.

Love Is The Thing was the first of four albums on which Cole collaborated with arranger Gordon Jenkins, and the collaboration proved to be an instant success.  This was Cole's first gold album (and it eventually went platinum), and it went to #1 on both the Billboard album chart and the UK album chart.  The Spotify version of the album is missing two songs, as I'm sure you noticed.

Favorite song from Side 1:  "Stardust"
"Stardust" was written by fellow IU alum Hoagy Carmichael, so I feel compelled to choose it.  Cole's version is soft and syrupy, but in a good way.  You could both fall in love and fall asleep to it at the same time.

Favorite song from Side 2:  "At Last"
Three years before Etta James recorded her now-iconic version of this early '40s song from the musical Sun Valley Serenade, Cole recorded a nice, smooth version for this album.