Nat King Cole –
Stardust Memories (Music Film
Compilation)
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: D Shorts: B-
Passport has put together a collection of TV appearances
and old 16mm Soundies, precursors of the Music Video, featuring Nat King Cole. Produced to play on jukebox-like machines,
these monophonic marvels were tools as effective as vinyl singles at the time
to promote a music act. See Stan Kenton
elsewhere on this site for more examples.
The songs here include:
1) Shy Guy
(Soundie #1045-8-251/1946)
2) Frim
Fram Sauce (with Shirley Johnson//#1045-8-249/1945)
3) I’m
Gonna Sit Right Down & Write Myself A Letter
4) I’ve
Grown Accustom To Her Face (from My Fair Lady)
5) I Want
To Be Happy
6) With You
On My Mind
7) Raintree
Country (title song from the film)
8) Too
Close For Comfort
9) Walkin’
My Baby Back Home
10) Because You’re Mine
11) Strange
12) My Heart Reminds Me
13) Stardust (as introduced by Tony
Curtis and Janet Leigh)
14) Do I Love You Because You’re Beautiful?
15) Blueberry Hill
That repeats some of the tracks form the Kultur DVD
release The Incomparable Nat King Cole, which had better sound if not
better picture. You can read more about
it at:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/453/Nat+King+Cole,+The+Incomparable
There are some tracks here that are not on the other two
discs. Here, you pay less and get less
in number of songs, but the
picture quality is about on par with the Kultur DVD and the Passport Unforgettable
Nat King Cole DVD we also have covered on the site. The Dolby Digital
2.0 Mono is passable, though many of the songs were cut in stereo upon release,
but the image is often muddy and a few generations down on all three reviewed
titles to date and all are in the 1.33 X 1 aspect ratio. The result is another inexpensive winner
fans will want to have until better copies come along. The sound is out of sync on track 14,
though, with this set running about 40 minutes.
- Nicholas Sheffo
