"Night of the Living Ed"
Another NAT KING COLE Birthday Special!
When we talk about the great champions of musical and performance culture, we are making a serious omission if we don’t include Ed Sullivan who presented and preserved more great music than virtually anyone in American history. For 22 years he brought us the greatest in American vernacular music, sometimes opera, classical, and world music as well. It became a cliché in Sullivan’s own lifetime to make fun of the stiff-jointed, low-personality host with his New York Irish accent and his iconic mispronunciations, “really big shew” and “Coaper Cabanner” (for Copacabana) as well as his awkward introductions and trips, verbal pratfalls, over his own tongue: “Dolores Gray - currently starving on Broadway!” and “Jim Newsome’s Puppets” instead of “Jim Henson’s Muppets.”
Yet the world got to see so much great music because of this man, from the billions of viewers who tuned in to CBS on Sunday evenings from 1948 to 1971, to millions more YouTubers today, thanks to the very excellent Ed Sullivan Show channel.
So far, no less than 24 songs by Nat King Cole have been posted on the Sullivan YouTube channel, which is far from all of them, but is still a very generous amount. Obviously Nat King Cole on Sullivan YouTube is every bit as popular as Nat King Cole on the original Toast of the Town and then The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS TV 70 years ago. (The major Sullivan-Cole show that I have NOT managed to see, alas, is the episode of Halloween 1954, in which Nat sang “Smile.” As of 2025, we do NOT have any video of Nat singing “Smile,” which would quickly become one of his signature songs.)
Today I’m just going to survey a few of those 24 clips, and if you enjoy it, let me know. I’ll start with his first appearance on the show on the first season of Toast of the Town in early 1949
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THE TOAST OF THE TOWN
March 27, 1949
Cole and the trio were flying high at this moment - Nat had just turned 30 - right in between their blockbuster 1948 hit “Nature Boy” and their overwhelmingly enormous early 1950 hit “Mona Lisa.” A few months earlier, the 1948 recording ban had ended so now the new trio, with the addition of percussionist Jack Costanzo, was back in the studios again, and had already made their television debut the previous June. Their debut on Sullivan’s Toast of the Town, from near the end of the first season, is as good a film as any that exists of this edition of the trio, with Irving Ashby, Joe Comfort, and Costanzo. Thanks to the Sullivan channel, we can reconstruct about 80 percent of this premiere appearance.
“Little Girl”
“Little Girl” was a bright and bouncy vintage 1931 jazz standard (by the very obscure team of Madeline Henry, a lesser-known female songwriter, and Francis Hyde) that Cole often used to open live shows. This 1949 performance is already significantly different from the 1947 studio version in the presence of Jack Costanzo on Latin percussion, but it still swings like crazy. (At some point I have to ask Professor Michael Garber, author of the new book Songs She Wrote, and who extensively researches female songwriters, if he has any intel on Madeline Henry. I have always suspected that John Pizzarelli named his own “Little Girl” after her. Must research!)
Medley: “It’s Only a Paper Moon’ | “How High The Moon”
With Hal LeRoy
“It’s Only a Paper Moon” had been one of Cole’s signature songs since he recorded it at the end of 1943, and for many years to come. “Paper Moon” had been originally released not as a single, but as part of his first album, The King Cole Trio (known retroactively as The King Cole Trio, Vol. One), and was one of Cole’s go-to standards for most of his career. “How High the Moon” was a 1940 show tune (from the revue Two for the Show) that Cole had helped make into a jam session perennial; he performed the song many times in and out of the studio, but almost always as an instrumental - he only sang the lyric once that I know of, on the September 3, 1957 episode of his NBC TV series. (I will also link to that clip.)
The very early 1949 kinescope includes an extra bonus in a brief chorus of tap-dancing by one of the all-time masters of the form, the marvelous star of 1930s Vitaphone featurettes, Hal LeRoy. Alas, the clip cuts out before the medley is finished, but what we have here is “cherce.” LeRoy was a fabulous and today under-appreciated dancer - check out his double routine with Peg Leg Bates on a later Sullivan show - and we wish this clip didn’t run out.
"Portrait of Jennie”
‘Portrait of Jennie” was a 1949 movie theme - from the high-profile melodrama Portrait of Jennie, a late-career David O. Selznick production that has been regarded the annals of Hollywood as primarily a vanity project to flatter his young paramour, Jennifer Jones, whom he would marry in July of that year. The movie has its moments, but the song is terrific, an under-appreciated gem that few have performed, even in NKC tribute projects. This is the only song I know of by lyricist Gordon Burge, but composer J. Russell Robinson goes all the way back to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, “Margie,” and “Singin’ the Blues.” (I’ve always wanted to hear Kurt Elling sing “Portrait of Jennie” - not least because his wife’s name is Jennie.)
Missing in Action: “Flo and Joe”
I suspect that the Sullivan channel people deliberately withheld this song, which is, admittedly, very un-PC by millennial standards - it makes fun of older women (40 is not old!) and casts dubious aspersions regarding the Latinx community. Bearing that in mind, it’s a great, fun and funny song, one of Cole’s best novelties. I’ll link to the Capitol Records recording - even though the later live performances swing more, again with the addition of Jack Costanzo. (I wonder if somewhere there’s a fearless soul who will actually sing this in the 21st century?) Nat’s piano solo and his (rare) scat chorus are both exceptionally brilliant. Maybe I can somehow convince either Mr. Pizzarelli or Mr. Elling to put on a phony beard and mustache and sing this one?
That’s the first of several dozen appearances of Nat King Cole on Toast of the Town and The Ed Sullivan Show - he would continue to appear regularly until 1961, when Cole and Sullivan had, as they say, “a falling out,” which I cover in some detail in my book, Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole. If the reaction is positive enough, I’ll go into a few more NKC-Sullivan episodes.
Two more bonus numbers:
“Nothing Ever Changes My Love For You”
March 25, 1956
Just because I love this classic Marvin Fisher-Jack Segal song, which we talked about here a few weeks ago, and the no-less-classic Nelson Riddle arrangement.
“On the Sunny Side of the Street”
With Tony Martin
May 6, 1956
This is a very fun duo - the kind of thing that Cole would do increasingly well on his NBC TV series, which launched a few months later. Nathaniel Adams Coles and Alvin Morris (née “Tony Martin”) were both professional musicians, “Tony” as a reed player (saxophone and clarinet), with several prominent west coast dance orchestras, including Tom Gerun and his Orchestra - before they became singing entertainers. Tony Martin was a beloved favorite on every TV variety show ever, and, in England, even shared a program with Billie Holiday. Alas, Al Morris and Eleanora Fagan didn’t sing together, but Nat and Tony did, quite wonderfully. (The two would reprise this duo on the NKC NBC show in September.)
Very special thanks to Jordan Taylor, the number one Nat King Cole discographer and researcher, for his essential help with this column. (Thanks also to Elizabeth Zimmer & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!)
Coming on Wednesday April 2, THE NEW YORK ADVENTURE CLUB presents the second of a three-part virtual online series on THE ELLA FITZGERALD SONGBOOKS - ELLA FITZGERALD & NAT KING COLE SING THE COLE PORTER SONGBOOK. (All presentations are available for replay viewing for one week after the live event. For more information & reservations, please click here.)
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.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming.) click here.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com; click here.
SING! SING! SING!
Female Songwriters of the Swing Era part 2 w Professor Michael G. Garber
(SSS #141 2025-03-29 Women's History Month)
download: <or> play online:
Female Songwriters of the Swing Era Part 1 w Professor Michael G. Garber
(SSS #140 2025-03-22 Women's History Month)
download: <or> play online:
The NAT KING COLE birthday Special - Nat & Nelson swing the Standards
(SSS #139 2025-03-15)
download: <or> play online:
The DON COSTA Centennial Special!
(SSS #138 2025-03-08)
download: <or> play online:
Ella Fitzgerald: "Ella's Race Problem" with Judith Tick
(BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2025-02-24)
download: <or> play online:
Nat King Cole: "We Are Americans Too" (“Assault on a King”)
(BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2025-02-18)
Download: <or> play online:
THE REAL AMBASSADORS with special guest Ricky Riccardi
(Black History Month 2025-02-17)
download: <or> play online:
The Don Redman Songbook
(SSS #135 2025-02-15 Black History Month)
download: <OR> play online:
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As a Canadian, I take pride in knowing that the legendary Canadian comedy duo Wayne and Shuster appeared more times on the Sullivan show in terms of total appearances than anyone else, compared to more celebrated guests. I hope the Sullivan YouTube channel will have them in action there...