Marvin Gaye: A Tribute To The Great Nat "King" Cole

MARVIN GAYE: A TRIBUTE TO THE GREAT NAT "KING" COLE (1965)

1) Nature Boy; 2) Ramblin' Rose; 3) Too Young; 4) Pretend; 5) Straighten Up And Fly Right; 6) Mona Lisa; 7) Unforgettable; 8) To The Ends Of The Earth; 9) Sweet Lorraine; 10) It's Only A Paper Moon; 11) Send For Me; 12) Calypso Blues.

General verdict: The album title pretty much says all you need to know here.

Just as things were finally starting to look good for Marvin in the LP department, his admired idol and mentor Nat "King" Cole had to go and die (February 15, 1965) — and, as a loyal disciple, Marvin simply had to honor his passing with a tribute album, his fourth one in the «easy liste­ning» department. An understandable and admirable gesture, for sure, but it is quite clear that if you are not a big fan of Nathaniel Adams Coles, you will have no use for these covers, and if you are a big fan, why in the hell would you listen to Marvin Gaye doing Nat "King" Cole instead of listening to the real thing?

At the very least, this record has a couple of things going for it. Most of the musical backing is provided by The Funk Brothers, which is a big improvement after the syrupy orchestrations of Hello Broadway. And, also predictably, the record has a jazzier and less Broadway-ish feel to it, though some of the genre excourses are silly — like rounding out the title selection with ʽCalypso Bluesʼ, for instance, so that you can ascertain for yourself that Mr. Gaye can do the Jamaican accent thing just as naturally, and ridiculously, as Nat himself.

On the other hand, this is quite expressly a tribute, and a rather slavish one: Marvin tends to imitate, rather than interpret, Cole on most of the tracks — and while on the overall scale Marvin Gaye, as a soon-to-be artist with a big musical vision, scores much higher with me than Nat King Cole, the consummate lounge entertainer, it is impossible for a visionary artist to beat a master of lounge entertainment at his own game. He simply does not have the appropriate seductive charms: the art of delicate phrasing, the subtle touches of vocal modulation, the velvety-Vegasy charisma, whatever. We may not count those as particularly great values in themselves, but once the rules are selected, even if they are bad rules, the winner is he who can follow them better than anybody else, and Marvin was never cut out for that sort of thing.

He could also bring more diversity to the proceedings — sappy ballads were not the only thing in Cole's repertoire, but non-ballad material here is restricted to the playful jump blues of ʽStraighten Up And Fly Rightʼ and ʽIt's Only A Paper Moonʼ, the Latin rhythms of ʽTo The Ends Of The Earthʼ, and the abovementioned ʽCalypso Bluesʼ. Naturally, Marvin does not play much piano, either, so if, for some reason, your introduction to Nat happens to be via this album (a very unlikely probability, but still), you will never know that the man was first and foremost a great piano player, and a crooner only in the second place. (Imagine Marvin Gaye doing A Tribute To The Great Jimi Hendrix five years later?.. that's right, neither can I).

The good news is that we are finally done with this shit. A Tribute would be Marvin's last ever attempt to harness the legacy of pop standards, Broadway show tunes, lounge jazz and Vegas glitz — perhaps it is most appropriate to treat this as a certified last goodbye to that whole sphere of business, set in the form of a farewell to one of his most beloved teachers. From now on, it would be modern-and-improved R&B all the way — not always great, not always truly cutting edge, but never looking back on an age that the man so obviously loved, but whose spirit he could carry on with just about the same level of passion and conviction as, say, Florence And The Machine demonstrate these days when covering Fleetwood Mac.