Songoftheday 12/7/17 - Like a song of love that clings to me, how the thought of you does things to me...
from the album Unforgettable...With Love (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #14 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 10
Today's song of the day comes from singer Natalie Cole, who had overcome her demons and made a nice comeback in the 1980's with two successful albums for EMI-Manhattan Records, along with a top-40 pop/top-10 dance single "Wild Women Do" from the movie Pretty Woman, from which the soundtrack surely gave her a nice royalty check. In 1991, possibly inspired by the success of 70s pop star Linda Ronstadt's immensely popular set of standards albums starting with What's New, which wrapped the singer with a blanket of orchestral goodness while singing classic songs of way, way long ago, Natalie honored her father Nat "King" Cole, the biggest African-American musician of the pre-rock era, with a collection of his well-known songs covered by her with classical instruments (along with her uncle Ike Cole on piano). The last of the twenty-two selections on the record had Cole sing a "virtual duet" with her dad, who had passed way back in 1965, mere weeks after she turned 15. The song, "Unforgettable", was originally released as a single by Cole back in 1951. The title song to a collection of his, not only was it not one of his biggest hits at that time (four of his singles topped the pre-rock chart), but it didn't even reach the top ten, peaking at #12. Nevertheless, the song, written by Irving Gordon and flawlessly orchestrated by Nelson Riddle, always remained a favorite of his...
Natalie's version doesn't stray far at all from the beauty of her father's record's arrangement, and even has the extended instrumental break that simply classed mainstream radio up...
Natalie and Nat's "Unforgettable" became Natalie's twelfth and final top-40 pop hit in the U.S. in August of 1991. The single also spent one week at #3 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, while crossing over to climb to #10 on their R&B chart. Internationally, the record reached the top ten in Australia (#2), New Zealand (#7), and Ireland (#10), while making the top-40 in Canada (#15), The Netherlands (#15), the UK (#19), and France (#36). During the Christmas season, Natalie released a cover of "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)", which her father made famous back in the day, and peaked at #22 on the Adult Contemporary list. Even though the album and single were massive, mainstream radio treated it as a one-off; her second single from the set, a cover of "The Very Thought Of You", got to #34 on the AC list and missed the pop Hot 100 altogether. However, selling over seven million copies just in the US alone is a fair trade-off. Also, when the Grammy Awards came in 1992, Natalie completely dominated the show, not only scoring the big three awards (Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year), but also took home trophies for Traditional Pop Vocal performance as well as engineering and arrangement awards.
In 1993, Natalie followed up Unforgettable with a jazz vocal release, Take A Look, which didn't have any pop hits, but did land her a top-40 single on the Adult Contemporary list (and #68 R&B) with the title track (#35, AC). She also won a Grammy for Jazz Vocal Album. Like Ronstadt, Cole found herself mostly written off by pop radio, and continued to thrive in the soft-rock world. In 1996, a contribution to the movie A Smile Like Yours starring Greg Kinnear, gave her a top ten AC hit with the title theme (#8), which gave Natalie her final pop charting single at #84. A year later, she earned herself another Grammy with another virtual duet with Nat, "When I Fall In Love" from her Stardust oldies record. Cole recapped her career with the optimistic Greatest Hits Vol 1, which had a new track "Livin' For Love", which was remixed for a #1 Dance Club Play hit in Billboard, and gave the title to a TV movie about her life. But the modern-sounding track missed all the pop and R&B charts, sending her back to concentrate on standards. Her 2002 album Ask A Woman Who Knows returned her to the top 40 on the albums chart at #34, and topped Billboard's Jazz Albums tally. It was followed by an album of more recent covers, Leavin', in which Natalie's version of Aretha Franklin's "Day Dreaming" got to #29 on the Adult Contemporary chart and #97 R&B (her last current charting single). A "sequel" to her 1991 classic, the Grammy-winning Still Unforgettable, which also had a duet with her father, arrived in 2008. However, Cole's health was declining, forcing her to have a kidney transplant after being diagnosed with Hepatitis C. Her last studio record was the Spanish-language Natalie Cole En Espanol in 2013. In two years, Natalie's heart would finally give up, and she passed in 2015, at the age of 65.
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's Natalie singing live in concert with a tape of her dad in 1992...
Here's another more intimate live setting...
Lastly, here she is in Russia in 2011....
Up tomorrow: Mulleted singer counts three things needed for a relationship.
Comments