VIA PRESS RELEASE | Resonance Records, the Los Angeles-based independent jazz label noted for its deluxe historical releases, issued the seven-CD/10-LP Nat King Cole boxed set Hittin’ the Ramp: The Early Years (1936-1943) on November 1, 2019. Following the great success of Hittin’ the Ramp, Resonance is releasing a “Best of the Box” digital compilation curated by Will Friedwald called Straighten Up and Fly Right – The Best of Hittin’ the Ramp: The Early Years (1936-1943).
Hittin’ the Ramp has been one of the best-selling boxed sets of the year (and Resonance still has a small number of limited-edition LP sets in its warehouse for sale. This ‘best of’ collection includes several of the previously unreleased studio sides, transcriptions, and private recordings of Cole’s earliest work from the boxed set and is also being produced in conjunction with the musician’s estate. One of the unreleased tracks, a transcription version of “This Side Up,” was not included on the box set and now makes its debut on Straighten Up and Fly Right. “The Nat King Cole family is thrilled to continue our relationship with Resonance Records, who have shown their unwavering commitment to showcase and preserve these historic recordings,” says Seth Berg of the Nat King Cole Estate.
“Hittin’ the Ramp was a really important project for Resonance,” says Zev Feldman, label co-president and the set’s co-producer. “We had never done a project of that size before, and we did our best to give Nat King Cole fans a definitive early years collection that can be cherished for decades to come. Given what’s happening in the world today, and with Mother’s Day coming up, we felt it was the perfect time to do a ‘best of the box’ edition that could reach everyone digitally and lift people’s spirits a little. Since manufacturing is shut down now with the Covid-19 virus, we’re starting with a digital-only release.”
The set’s co-producer, writer and historian Will Friedwald wrote the main essay for Hittin’ the Ramp and has written a biography on Nat King Cole titled Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole that is coming in June on Oxford University Press. He writes that Cole’s deep and influential jazz roots were often obscured by his towering reputation as a pop singer.
“At the height of his fame in the 1950s and ‘60s,” he writes, “Nat King Cole (1919-1965) was primarily known as a popular singer—the biggest-selling artist of his generation, no less—who occasionally played piano. By that point, only a few older fans and critics remembered that he had been one of the greatest pianists in the whole history of American music, a true spiritual descendent of Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines and Art Tatum, and himself a huge inspiration for Oscar Peterson, George Shearing, Erroll Garner, and many others.”
Straighten Up and Fly Right contains over a dozen transcriptions, mainly by the trio, cut by Standard and Davis & Schwegler for servicing to radio stations, as well as wartime recordings produced for American servicemen by the Armed Forces Radio Service.
Friedwald adds, “We’re covering this quintessential American artist from his very first stirrings at the start of the swing era to the very precipice of universal fame during World War Two, with dozens of fascinating detours along the way. This is the incredible but true origin story of a sound and a career that would change the world.”
Here is Nat King Cole, just as he was hittin’ the ramp.
TRACK LISTING:
With Plenty of Money and You (1938, Standard transcription)
Liza (1938, Standard transcription)
There’s No Anesthetic for Love (1939, Davis & Schwegler transcription)
Riffin’ at the Bar-B-Q (1939, Davis & Schwegler transcription)
Honey (19)39, Standard transcription)
Two Against One (1939, Standard transcription)
Black Spider Stomp (1939, Standard transcription)
Sweet Lorraine (1939, Standard transcription)
Off the Beam (1940, Standard transcription)
Early Morning Blues (1940, Standard transcription)
Gone with the Draft (1940, Standard transcription)
What’cha Know Joe (1940, unreleased radio broadcast)
Blue Lou (1939, Standard transcription)
Baby, Won’t You Please Come (1939, Standard transcription)
Rosetta (1939, Standard transcription)
Hit that Jive, Jack (1942, AFRS Mail Call #16)
I’m Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town (1942 or 1943, Live from the 331 Club)
Hip Hip Hooray (AFRS Jubilee #5)
Slender, Tender, and Tall (1943, AFRS Jubilee #29)
Straighten Up and Fly Right (1943, AFRS Personal Album #227)
This Side Up (1941, Standard Transcription)
