House of Bamboo

According to the all knowing All Music site, Earl Grant was a "triple threat" - organ, piano and a vocalist.
I'm thinking he was a poor mans Nat King Cole.
In any case....dig the groove.

Got a Penny, Benny?

Mona Lisa Nat and King Cole Trio Nat, two entirely different people.

Anyone else feel their blood pressure return to normal when they listen to the King Cole Trio?

Nature Boy

Singer/songwriter eden ahbez (lower case by his choice) was one of the first California granola hippies, sporting long hair and beard and eating a raw food diet back in the early 1940s. When Nat King Cole's cover of ahbez' "Nature Boy" hit the charts in a big way in 1948, the song's composer was found by the media living underneath the famed Hollywood sign.

On this album from Roller Ship ahbez sings of mynah birds, snakes being chased by mongooses, and his banana, in no particular order of significance.

(The blog also offers a complete album by The Peanuts, of Mothra fame, another reason to visit.)

Look! I'm Bibi! (minus the box)

I never cease to be amazed by what shows up on archive.org.



This particular video is worth watching if only for the unique way Big Joe Turner interprets "Shake Rattle and Roll" for the cameras (at 43 minutes in) a real live feel to it. Other performances include:
Cab Calloway in full mop o' hair mode for "Minnie the Moocher" with shadow play;
"Bad Bad Whiskey" (amen!) sung by Amos Milburn;
The Delta Rhythm Boys singing "Dry Bones" in a pretty static presentation;
Nat 'King' Cole sings a Havana-moon-style slow calypso song;
and Mantan Moreland and Nipsey Russell do classic bits of "That's bad/no, that's good" (where Nipsey expresses glee that his aged wife burns to death ha-HA!) and the old "Finishing your sentence" joke stream.

The compression is fairly strong on the embed, so - and how cool is this - why not just download a nice 3.5 gig mpeg2 version? Cause they got it!

The perfect answer to "No, my brotha! You got to get your own!" (Sorry- a purely USA reference, from the "Hello Love" album compilation commercial back in the 70's)

Billy Preston knows ...

Nat King Cole 10-Year-Old Billy Preston
envoyé par paleopale

on NBC-TV 's Nat King Cole show in 1957



Ray Charles and Billy Preston - Agent Double-o Soul on The Johnny Cash Show 196?

BooBoo, PLEASE

I can’t imagine why no one has done a recent cover version of “Mama Look at BooBoo”, the classic Lord Melody calypso song, here watered down and rendered harmless by Harry Belafonte and Nat King Cole …..perhaps it has something to do with the adorable nickname the kids have for their father, or dad’s old school way of dealing with his disrespectful brood.




If you love the vintage calypso, as I do, be sure to stop by Irwin Chusid’s new blog that provides visual accompaniment to his WFMU radio series “Muriel’s Treasure”.

(sheet music image snagged from Calypso World )