Unforgettable in every way

One hundred years ago, a man with one of the most beautiful, instantly-recognisable voices in history was born.

Nathaniel Adams Coles was a bit of a child prodigy - he learned how to play the church organ at 4 years old, and was taking piano lessons at twelve. When he was fifteen, Cole dropped out of high school to pursue a music career, eventually achieving a modicum of success with the King Cole Trio. However, it was this song that first made his name, becoming a huge radio hit for him way back in 1940:

Nat King Cole - Sweet Lorraine

The hits just kept coming from then on, including these:

Nat King Cole - Nature Boy

Nat King Cole - Mona Lisa

Nat King Cole - When I Fall In Love

Nat King Cole - Unforgettable

He broke new ground by being not only the first black person to have his own radio show in the 1940s, but also (ten years later) the first African-American-hosted television show. However, the deeply-embedded racism of American society was never far away. His TV show was eventually cancelled due to the reluctance of companies to sponsor it [to which Nat responded: "Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark."]; this was on top of the experience he had when he moved to the the exclusive Los Angeles neighbourhood of Hancock Park in 1948 - he and his wife Maria faced daily harassment, which culminated in someone burning the word "Nigger" into their lawn and poisoning the family dog. Eventually (after criticism from the NAACP for playing to segregated audiences, and after he himself had been subject to an assault on stage), Nat became a prominent spokesperson for the Civil Rights Movement.



His musical legacy is huge - he sold 50 million records in a career that spanned from 1940 to his death in 1965, and beyond (his daughter Natalie's posthumous duets with her dad being most lauded) - but this is probably my favourite...

Nat King Cole - Lets Face The Music and Dance

Perfect "Sunday Music"...

Nat King Cole (born Nathaniel Adams Coles, 17th March 1919 – 15th February 1965)

Immovable object and irresistible force

Two icons. Two birthday milestones.

For today it is the 75th birthday of Dame Shirley Bassey, and the 65th birthday of David Bowie!

To kick off this most special of days, I here repeat in full a blog I posted three years ago.

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It is difficult to even contemplate making a link between these two all-time favourites of mine, poles apart as they are. But, in this fascinating article from 1976, journalist Derek Jewell does just that - and it is as apt today as it was way back then at the height of their respective powers...

BOWIE AND BASSEY
Sunday Times | May 9 1976

Shirley Bassey and David Bowie on successive nights. So contrasting, yet so similar. She a peach in maturity; he fragile as a stick insect, and just as elusive to discern, define, deny. Similar? Certainly. Both are children of our time, climbing out of Tiger Bay and Brixton, and so, enabling audiences to identify with them, are archetypal popular music idols.

She feeds middle-aged fantasy, epitomized in beautiful songs like Yesterday When We Were Young. He encourages a younger army, bored with their external characters, to seek within themselves alterative egos; as artist-hero, he kills off his past roles - Ziggy Stardust, spaceman, bisexualist, rebel - like clockwork, with only the orange coxcomb of his hair for continuity. His disciples dutifully ape him.

Both, too, are beyond normal criticism, defying purely musical assessment. Bassey over-sings (but thrillingly) and cannot perform except with total commitment. Bowie over-plays (but rivetingly) and demands attention by his extravagant idiosyncrasy, which is as professionally adamantine as hers. She devours the audience; he incites it. Each earthquakingly demonstrates the power of personality.

Shirley Bassey sang, in all, to 25,000 at the Albert Hall last week. Tuesday, second house, was an outstanding triumph. Standing ovation after standing ovation, the emotion aroused by her beauty and her passionate singing flooding the arena. She is at her peak. She still goes over the top sometimes, which is Bassey magically being herself, but she knows more about light and shade than ever. She whispers the final note of The Way We Were; within Something, the orchestration leaves momentary sounds of silence. Her world conquests are richly earned.

David Bowie entertained 50,000 at Wembley. On Monday, after a boring surrealistic movie, greeted with cynical derision, his casual entry was spellbinding. He has murdered Ziggy, appearing glitterless in plain black trousers, waistcoat and white shirt, looking like a refugee from Isherwood's Berlin cabarets. The lighting, with Bowie trapped in harsh white cross-beams, was rock's most brilliantly theatrical effect. He sang 14 songs, and when the hundreds of mini-Bowies leapt on seats, miming every gesture, he played with them, smiling. He's rejected soft orchestrations (as on Space Oddity) for a thunderous R & B backing, which is tiresomely flairless. It ruined Stay, the best of his Station to Station album. But Bowie's personal performance was monstrously successful, more of a charged-up crooner than an Alice Cooper rival.

Is he sinister? There are, undeniably, visual Nuremberg overtones. Bowie-obsessiveness is sterile. But mostly, I suspect, he's the prisoner of his own publicity, his need to keep changing his image. Musically, he's limited as yet. It's where he ends up that matters. Meantime his own lyric, 'Fame, bully for you, chilly for me, gotta get a raincheck on pain', may yet be his epitaph.

And, after a bit of research, I find this song is the only one that has been covered by both artists, with - obviously - very different interpretations... It's Nature Boy:

David Bowie - Nature Boy

Dame Shirley Bassey - Nature Boy

That's just a starter...