Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole

Nat King Cole (1919-65) remains one of the 20th century's most beloved and unforgettable American musicians, a rare talent who achieved lasting fame as both a pianist and a singer within the world of popular music. In this comprehensive biography, Will Friedwald offers a fresh perspective on this fascinating artist, positioning him initially as a bandleader before exploring his ascent to solo stardom.

Friedwald explains that in Cole's early career, his primary focus was sustaining his trio, a task that held equal importance to his own playing and singing, always conceived as a collective or group performance. In the subsequent phase of his career, Cole's collaborators shifted towards arranger-conductors such as Nelson Riddle and Gordon Jenkins, rather than his bass and guitar sidemen. During his trio years, his bandmates were equals; in his solo career, collaborators were primarily tasked with showcasing him, ensuring he sounded his best while remaining largely unseen themselves.

Drawing upon his extensive musical knowledge, Friedwald intricately connects the man to his work, demonstrating how this duality permeated Cole's life and career. This tension manifested in various forms: jazz versus pop, solo artist versus trio leader, piano versus voice, his first wife Nadine versus his second wife Maria, exceptional songs versus less remarkable ones, rhythm numbers versus ballads, humorous and novelty songs versus "serious" songs of love and loss, Cole as a champion of the Great American Songbook versus Cole as an intrepid explorer of other musical avenues, including world music, rhythm & blues, and country & western. Cole also stood apart from many of his contemporaries; for roughly a decade following the Second World War, the majority of hitmakers on the pop charts, from Sinatra downwards, were veterans of the big band era.