A Tribute to the Great Nat King Cole

by

Marvin Gaye

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Early in his career Motown legend Marvin Gaye had wanted to

be a crooner and his primary idol in this field was Nat King Cole.So it's only natural that he would pay tribute to him on this covers album midway through his early 60's success.The amazing part of this is he actually pulls it off-offering up

beautiful covers of tunes like "Rambling Rose" and "Nature Boy",

right up there with the standards set by Nat himself!Now there

will never be another Nat King Cole but Gaye puts his own,more

sudtle spin on this classics using very similar backup orchestrations.

The highlight is the closing "Calypso Woman" in

whitch Marvin Gaye delivers a more soulful,animated and pugnacious approch to the vocals then Nat ever did and it ends

up sounding like an original!Now normally I've always questioned

Barry Gordy's need for his acts to appeal to the early 60's

white supper club crowd but because Marvin Gaye always tended to

gravitate to these kinds of songs on his own then it was perfectly legidiment for him to do this album.But without a hit

it became burried back in 1965,was reissued on CD with all of

Gaye's 60's albums in the mid 80's and is actually still in print

as something of a cutout,but who knows for how long.Before it

goes out of print ALL Gaye fans should pick this album up!And

for thouroughbred Nat Cole fans I'd take antoher look at this

album-it won't dissappoint you either!