Nat King Cole: A Deep Cut For D-Day (And Happy Birthday, Monty Alexander!)
Above: A Vintage Souvenir Map of the Path of the Allied Forces
This week we celebrate two monumental anniversaries of June 6, 1944: the official launch of the Allied Invasion of Europe, better known then and now as “D-Day,” and the birth of Montgomery Bernard Alexander (named for Field Marshall Montgomery), better known as Monty, who officially celebrated his 80th birthday at Birdland last week. It’s nice to think that I have at least one thing in common with Sinatra: we both rank Monty Alexander as one of the greatest and most consistently entertaining players to ever come near the piano.
Monty has a new album titled, appropriately D-Day; I haven’t received my copy yet, but he played excerpts at Birdland, and it’s up to his usual high standard. He performed two originals inspired by the mood of 1944, an aggressive uptempo instrumental about war and another, kinder gentler tune about peace. The album also includes Monty’s very moving arrangement of the Sinatra standard, “I’ll Never Smile Again,” which dates from the very beginning of the WW2 period.
I celebrate the music of 1944 on my radio show Sing! Sing! Sing! (and with special guest Dave Weiner, we talk about the impending 2024 Jazz Records Collectors Bash in two weeks). This week on Slouching Towards Birdland, I’m offering a few of those vintage 1944 tracks, as well as some bonus historic footage.
One point that’s perhaps forgotten by history is that D-Day was being called D-Day long before D-Day actually transpired. It was known on both sides of the conflict that an Allied Invasion of Occupied Europe was going to start sooner rather than later, to chase the Nazis out of France. All the media, as we would say today, and pop culture were buzzing with speculation through the Winter and Spring of 1943 into 1944: when is D-Day actually going to happen?
In the summer of 1994, I was in the middle of doing interviews for Sinatra! The Song is You when my friend the beloved Roger Schore introduced me to the amazing Lew Spence, most famously the first great composer-partner of Alan and Marilyn Bergman and a truly wonderful songwriter who wrote many classic songs for Sinatra, Fred Astaire, Peggy Lee, Jo Stafford, and many others. I was enough of a King Cole fan by then to already have a tape of a 1944 MacGregor transcription by the King Cole Trio titled “D-Day” but at that point, I had no idea who had written it. So I was thrilled and delighted, as Mel Brooks would say, when Lew started talking about the song in the middle of our interview. (Thanks also to my other great buddy, Eric Comstock, who was there in my crowded little office on West 26th Street to help me interview Lew.)
In the Spring of 1944, Lew Spence (1920-2008) was an aspiring but frustrated young songwriter, who, at the time, felt like he was never going to get a break. At 23, he hadn’t yet landed any songs that had been recorded or published. But, like everyone else, he was on the edge of his seat wondering when D-Day was going to start.
Lew (speaking in 1994): I had a marvelous thing happen to me, I don't know if you can use this, but I'll tell it anyway. A few weeks ago when the D-Day, 50th anniversary of D-Day was coming around, I thought to myself. . . I was very sad in those years - I didn't think I was ever going to be a songwriter. This was about six or so years before I became a professional songwriter, when songs just fell out of me, I heard the expression “D-Day,” which was just about to happen in 1944, and I got an idea for a song. I was thinking that the words “D-Day” sounded like a riff to me, like "Do-Wah," So I wrote a song called “D-Day.”
WF: Was that the song recorded by The King Cole Trio?
Lew: You're the only one in the world that knows that!
WF: I have the MacGregor transcription, but no composer credit. I never knew who wrote that, or I would have asked you about it.
Lew: Here's how it happened: Not knowing that you shouldn't do things like this, I walked into the Trocadero, where Nat was playing with his trio one night. I walked right up to the bandstand; he was getting ready for the evening, and I said: "Mr. Cole?" I would never do this later, you know, I'd go to his office, or to a manager, or to a recording executive! (Note: The Trio was indeed playing the Trocadero that summer, from D-Day week in June to August. Thank you Jordan Taylor for confirming that.)
I said, "Mr. Cole! I've got a great song for you right here!" And he looked at me like I was absolutely crazy. He was very impatient, but he was such a nice man. He wasn't angry, but he was, you know, “why are you doing this to me right now?” kind of attitude. And he said: "Well, can you play the piano?" And I said: "Yes." "Well, go ahead and play it for me." And I sat down and I started to play, and I had, by osmosis, learned how to inter-rhyme things, and get these cute little things (here, Lew quotes a few lines from Rodgers & Hart’s “Mountain Greenery”). Things like that, they all were natural for me. I love that kind of writing.
So, I started, there was an expression going around that was like the word Man is used today, and it was `Gate' - Hey Gate. and I wrote: "Grab yourself a chair and sit down Gate, you're going to hear some news of a military nature, relax." Well, when I did that rhyme he kind of perked up, and listened to the whole song, and he told me he loved it. Within a day or two, he recorded it for something called MacGregor Transcriptions.
(Not long after) he said to me: "Lew, Capitol records says that now that D-Day is come and gone, it's VJ-day, by the time we get it recorded and packaged and distributed, nobody will buy it, so they won't record it. So, he gave me a platter, a copy of the transcription, and over the years I lost it, because it didn't mean that much to me, it was just the moment, I wrote the song in about five minutes in my head, you know.
Lew then went on on to talk about how he had the good sense and good fortune, at the time of the 50th anniversary of D-Day, to license the song to The Discovery Channel for a documentary on the Normandy Invasion.
Here are the lyrics, if you want to sing along:
You better grab a chair and sit down, Gate, you're
Gonna hear some news of a military nature.
Relax, while I give you the latest report, sport.
There never was a finer sight
When all our boys were fixed to fight
On D-Day, D-Day, D-Day, D-Day.
We hope they'll soon be comin' back;
For now, they're on a silent track
Till D-Day, D-Day, D-Day, D-Day.
It'll take more than a weekend,
So let's be patient and calm.
Cut out that public speakin',
Or we'll be the victim of a false alarm.
We got to help - we're in it, too,
So buy those bonds, and I do mean you,
For D-Day, D-Day, D-Day, D-Day.
D-Day, D-Day, D-Day, D-Day.
D-Day, D-Day, D-Day, D-Day.
It'll take more than a weekend,
So let's be patient and calm.
Cut out that public speakin',
Or we'll be the victim of a false alarm.
We got to help - we're in it, too,
So buy those bonds, and I do mean you,
For D-Day, D-Day, D-Day, D-Day.
D-Day, D-Day, D-Day, D-Day.
I asked Lew if he had written other songs for Nat Cole, and he said, no, which is technically correct. However, Cole did sing two of Lew’s songs on his 1956-’57 NBC TV series. “So Long My Love’ is a classic Sinatra - Riddle / Capitol single, with a melody by Lew and words by Sammy Cahn, which Nat sang briefly on a live telecast from Las Vegas. First, here’s the number by itself, in a low-res copy on youTube. Then we’ll follow, with a copy of the complete 15-minute show, taken from the Japanese laserdisc package (courtesy Steve Kramer) albeit with French subtitles.
(There’s a whole other story Lew told about working with Sammy on “So Long My Love,” and how he led Sammy to include the line “Face It’ during a two-note break, when Sammy’s first choice was “Baby!”)
15 minute show - 2:20
The other song was “It’s Just About That Time Again,” with Spence’s melody and a lyric by Alan & Marilyn Bergman. A few years ago, Alan - who will celebrate his 100th birthday in September 2025 - told me the story, and I included it in Straighten Up and Fly Right:
At the start, the Nat King Cole Show didn’t have an ending theme, until the young songwriter Alan Bergman presented Cole with one. One of Bergman’s mentors had been (the celebrated lyricists) Leo Robin, who had written, by accident or design, theme songs for no less than three major entertainers: Jack Benny’s “Love in Bloom,” Bob Hope’s “Thanks for the Memory,” and Eddie Cantor’s “One Hour with You.” Robin encouraged Bergman to try to do the same, and he and his partners, composer Lew Spence and co- lyricist Marilyn Keith, came up with a closing theme for The Nat King Cole Show titled “It’s Just About That Time Again.” “Nat was just the nicest guy,” as Bergman said many times when we spoke in 2019; “he was just so thrilled that we had written a song for him.” Bergman was well aware that dozens of songwriters were writing songs for Cole all the time, but Nat still acted excited and flattered that the Bergmans (Alan and Marilyn were soon married) and Spence had gone to the trouble.
Alas, Nat never had the chance to record this one either, but it’s a lovely song that also serves as my ending theme on Sing! Sing! Sing!
Very Special thanks to the fabulous Ms. Elizabeth Zimmer, for expert proofreading of this page, and scanning for typos, mistakes, and other assorted boo-boos!
Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz - and jazz-adjacent - singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen, who help to make them great.”
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June 8: Honoring The 80th Anniversary of D-Day : Music from June 1944
SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a subStack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. (Thanks as always to Beth Naji & Arlen Schumer for special graphics.) Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more! (And always remember: “A man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.”)
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Fantastic story - make that stories. Thanks, Will.
Just purchased that Cole WWII transcription disc after listening to that cool "D-Day" tune-thanks , Will.