The Unforgettable Nat King Cole
Picture: C Sound: C Extras: D Program: B-
Since
covering Kultur’s The Incomparable Nat King
Cole, we have yet to see Capitol Records issue the DVD-Audio and/or Super
Audio CD titles we expected would soon be announced. Fortunately, Passport has come up with The Unforgettable Nat King Cole, which
offers 17 performance clips as follows:
Route 66
Sweet Loraine
Calypso Blues
Nature Boy
Opus One
Autumn Leaves
Shine On Harvest Moon
Got A Penny Benny
Little Girl
Mona Lisa
Save The Bones For Henry Jones
When I Fall In Love
So Long My Love
Tenderly
Stompin’ At The Savoy
Straighten Up & Fly Right
Je Vous Aime Beaucoup
Ten of
the songs also show up on the Kultur DVD, sometimes in the same exact clip, but
there are enough new and different clips here to justify getting this DVD as
some are later performances (likely out of some trivial motion pictures he
happened to be in) in color and some are prior to the TV series the Kultur DVD
pulls from as its only source. Of course,
Unforgettable is oddly missing,
considering the name of the DVD. The
oldest material has a very young Cole already showing what a remarkable talent
he was.
The picture
quality is about on par with the Kultur DVD, but older clips look their age and
later clips have color fidelity issues and probably will not be seen correctly
until the major studios that own the actual films fix them properly. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is passable,
though many of the songs were cut in stereo on release and some of the later
color clips may have been stereophonic.
The Kultur DVD had 5.1 remixes that we not bad, but not from any master
tapes either. This is an average
presentation overall, with some of the material surviving remarkably at
all. There are no extras.
It should
also be said that the camera loved Nat King Cole, which is why all these clips
are so compelling to view over and over again.
The Unforgettable Nat King Cole
is a rough assembly, but worth your time.
- Nicholas Sheffo
