Elektra 61049
Executive producers: Tommy LiPuma and Natalie Cole
Track listing: The Very Thought of You / Paper Moon / Route 66 / Mona Lisa / L-O-V-E / This Can’t Be Love / Smile / That Sunday That Summer / Orange Colored Sky / A Medley: For Sentimental Reasons, Tenderly, Autumn Leaves, Straighten Up and Fly Right / Avalon / Don’t Get Around Much Anymore / Too Young / Nature Boy / Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup / Almost Like Being in Love / Thou Swell / Non Dimenticar / Our Love Is Here to Stay / Unforgettable
July 27, 1991
5 weeks
“I’m sure that there have been other artists and producers who wanted to do a record like this, but everyone was so afraid, because it wouldn’t sell,” says Natalie Cole. “That’s what I was told. I just had to get to the point of saying, ‘Okay, so it won’t sell, I’m going to do it anyway.'”
Natalie Cole eventually reached that point when she decided to record an album of songs made famous by her father Nat “King” Cole, but it didn’t happen overnight.
Born in Los Angeles on February 6, 1950, Cole first performed professionally at the age of 11. By her college years, she was regularly performing in clubs and soon secured a contract with Capitol Records, which yielded a string of gold and platinum albums beginning in 1975, when she won a Grammy for best new artist.
By the late ’70s, Cole’s album sales were beginning to slide. Yet, after signing with EMI in the late ’80s, she racked up several top 20 singles, including her version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac,” which climbed to number five in 1988.
“I was still establishing who I was,” she says. “That meant not doing any of my dad’s music for however long it took, until people were convinced I could sing my own stuff. I had to wait until I could pull it off and I feel good about it.”
When Cole finally felt the time was right, EMI did not, leading her to leave that label. Upon signing with Elektra, Cole proposed to do a pop album first, then an album of her father’s classics. Cole recalls, “Then I went back to L.A. and [Elektra CEO] Bob Krasnow called me up and said, ‘I think you should do it now.’ And I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘The album of your father’s music, do it now.’ ”
Finally going to work on the project was frightening at first, Cole admits, but the recording sessions, which were conducted in several different studios, “went like clockwork.”
“Unforgettable,” the title track, featured Cole exchanging verses with her father’s original recording. Initially, the single was serviced only to adult contemporary radio stations, but it soon crossed over to top 40, peaking at number 14 in the summer of 1991.
Unforgettable with Love featured several musicians who had played on Nat “King” Cole’s recordings. In addition, portions of the album were recorded or 26th anniversary of the late crooner’s death in the same studio at Capitol Records that he frequently used. “The one thing that saved that session from being a total disaster was that were doing big band stuff,” Cole says, “It was real up.”
The album and “Unforgettable” went on to garner seven Grammy Awards, including record, album, and song the year, as well as best traditional performance, and producer of the year for David Foster, who worked on project with Tommy LiPuma, Cole and her husband, Andre Fischer.
The success of the project was a surprise to Cole. “You could say that,” she says. “I was stupefied.”
THE TOP FIVE
Week of July 27, 1991
1. Unforgettable with Love, Natalie Cole
2. For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, Van Halen
3. Spellbound, Paula Abdul
4. Gonna Make You Sweat, C + C Music Factory
5. Slave to the Grind, Skid Row