It would have been natural for Natalie Cole to kick off her solo career 16 years ago with some tunes from her father, the late Nat ”King” Cole.
It also would have been career suicide, she says, which is why she has waited until now to record his most memorable tunes on a new album called
”Unforgettable.”
”The world is full of little labels for you,” she says. ”I`ve always loved this music, but if I had started with this, I might never have been allowed to make my own music, the rhythm and blues or the pop. I would have been stigmatized as someone who does only this kind of music.”
Today, with a long chain of her own hits, she thinks this album can finally be seen in her larger musical context.
”Someone who only has one of my albums only sees a small part of what I do,” she says. ”If you just hear `Pink Cadillac,` that`s not the whole picture.”
One of her ongoing struggles in the music business, in fact, has been finding a label that allowed her to cover her full range.
”Let`s face it,” she says. ”This is the music business. It`s not a school of thought. It`s not about quality or integrity. It`s about making money. People`s careers are compromised all the time to sell records.”
More Top Picks Best Under Counter Fridges
She says her current label, Elektra, is the first to give her the freedom she sought, and now that this album is coming out, she`s taking full advantage of it, including a tour with an orchestra.
The tour, like the album, will also be a departure for Natalie, because
”my father`s music is very different from mine. His arrangements were very tough and masculine, and since I was obviously singing with a female voice, that made the music a little lighter right away.
”Also, his approach to songs was much more straightforward,” she notes, ”so I sing very differently than I sing my own material. The great long wailing notes, for instance-they`re out.”
She says she tried to walk the line between her father`s original arrangements and styles that are a little more `90s.
”Some had to be made more contemporary, because they were so clearly dated. But we tried to do it subtly, like by adding more harmonics. On `Nature Boy,` we put in a muted trumpet that gave it a Miles Davis kind of vibe. I loved that.”
Most of the world, of course, loves Nat ”King” Cole`s music, but while Natalie Cole says she finds this gratifying, she doesn`t think that means the world understands the human side of her father yet.