EP120: Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding on the Nat King Cole Trio’s “Complete Capitol Recordings of the Nat King Cole Trio” (1991)

Episode notes

It’s easy to think of Nat King Cole as “that Christmas song guy” but his musical output is truly astounding, recording hundreds of songs with over a hundred of them becoming hits on the pop charts. The Complete Capitol Recordings of the Nat King Cole Trio is by far the largest album we’ve ever discussed on Heat Rocks and we couldn’t have asked for better guests to come break it down with us.

Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding of the Switched on Pop podcast sit down with us to talk about this enormous anthology, the timbre of Cole’s voice, and the ubiquity of the AABA song structure. Stay tuned to the very end for a special Heat Rocks theme song workshop.

More on Switched on Pop

More on Nat King Cole

Show Tracklisting (all songs from The Complete Capitol Recordings unless otherwise indicated):

All for You
John Pizzarelli: The Best Man
The Best Man
(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons
An Old Piano Plays the Blues
I’m In The Mood For Love
Sweet Lorraine
Embraceable You (1943 version)
Embraceable You (1961 version)
I’ve Got A Way With Women
Jonas Brothers: Sucker
Prelude in C Sharp Minor
The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You)
Nature Boy
Ahmed Sirour: Nature Boy
Can You Look Me In The Eyes (And Say We’re Through)
I’m An Errand Boy for Rhythm
The Frim Fram Sauce
Embraceable You (1961 version)
Nat King Cole: Almost Like Being in Love
Kendrick Lamar: Thanksgiving
An Old Piano Plays the Blues
John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman: My One and Only Love
Brook Benton: Mother Nature, Father Time
Speedy West: Speedin’ West
Slim & Slam: Jump Session

Here is the Spotify playlist of as many songs as we can find there.

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In this episode...

Oliver Wang

Host

Morgan Rhodes

Host

Christian Dueñas

Producer

Guests

Nate Sloan
Charlie Harding

About the show

Hosted by Oliver Wang and Morgan Rhodes, every episode of Heat Rocks invites a special guest to talk about a heat rock – a hot album, a scorching record. These are in-depth conversations about the albums that shape our lives.

Our guests include musicians, writers, and scholars and though we don’t exclusively focus on any one genre, expect to hear about albums from the worlds of soul, hip-hop, funk, jazz, Latin, and more.

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