Nat King Cole • Hittin' The Ramp: The Early Years (1936-1943)

Resonance Records HLP-9042
Ten 180-gram LPs
2019

Music

Sound

to

by Marc Mickelson | January 24, 2020

n the late 1940s, Nat Cole made a career move that was as risky as it was radical. After more than a decade of success as a jazz pianist, during which he led his own trio, he became a pop singer. The results are difficult to argue with: chart-toping singles and albums spread over two decades, during which he ranked alongside Frank Sinatra. His creamy voice and flawless phrasing made him a master of romantic ballads, and some songs -- "Mona Lisa," "Route 66," "It's Only a Paper Moon" -- are simply considered his.

It is an earlier, mostly pre-“King” Nat Cole, that this lavish and comprehensive set documents, commemorating his hundredth birthday late last year. Spread over ten LPs (seven CDs are also available) are the musical products of seven years before Cole’s string of albums for Capitol Records, when he and his jazz trio -- piano, guitar and bass -- recorded some impressive sides for many different labels. Source materials vary -- including radio transcriptions, private recordings and acetates. Among the nearly 200 cuts are some that were previously unknown; others were culled from university archives and the Library of Congress.

Resonance Records specializes in just this sort of set. While George Klabin, the label’s founder, is dedicated to discovering, supporting and recording new artists from around the world, his real passion seems to be releasing historical recordings that bring together little-known and previously unreleased materials from jazz legends. Previous sets come from John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery, Bill Evans, Charles Lloyd, Eric Dolphy, Grant Green, Stan Getz and Freddie Hubbard. Some of these collections, released for Record Store Day or Black Friday events, have become instant collector's items.

In compiling this set, Resonance Records left no aspect unaddressed, as the 180-gram LPs themselves prove. Pressed at RTI and housed in rice-paper sleeves, they have audiophile cred from the care that went into their creation. Mastering from the disparate sources was done at Cohearant Audio, where so many great Blue Note reissues have been resurrected. In contrast to those later recordings, some of these required sonic restoration, which was also done at Cohearant.

The musical highlights are many, with views of both Nat Cole, the top jazz pianist who led his own trio and the soon-to-be pop icon. There are also a couple of small-group numbers with well-known tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Dexter Gordon. It is Cole, the pianist who's also an emerging pop star, that most readily charms here, on numbers like "Sweet Loraine" and "Straighten Up and Fly Right." But all of this music is charming, in three-minute blocks, and nostalgic: swing was coming to an end, with a more improvisational jazz to follow, and the Cole trio was rooted in that transition. As a pianist, Cole did not display the sheer keyboard athleticism of Oscar Peterson or the quirky timing of Thelonious Monk. His gifts were crispness and precision, abilities he honed playing in bars and nightclubs all over Southern California. The sound here is a function of the original materials, and their age -- soft transients, distant piano sound, and some scratchiness. But there is also a directness that's endearing, making up for the lack of wide-ranging fidelity and dynamic incisiveness that are surely not present in the source materials.