Latest news with #NatKingCole
Chicago Tribune
3 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
One Century, One Road
It was created to connect us, a fused chain of existing roadways many unpaved that stretched 2,448 miles across eight states and three time zones, starting steps from Lake Michigan in downtown Chicago and ending near the Pacific Ocean and Santa Monica's famed fishing pier. Route 66, 'The Main Street of America.' There is perhaps no better-known highway anywhere in the world. In its 100-year history, it has offered safe passage to Dust Bowl refugees, World War II transports and vacationing families. John Steinbeck called it 'the mother road, the road of flight.' Nat King Cole crooned about its kicks in a 1946 hit song. Disney and Pixar took inspiration from it for a 2006 blockbuster. The famed highway conjured images of quirky roadside attractions, mom-and-pop diners, neon-signed motels and art deco service stations. Each mile promised freedom, escape, adventure, exploration. It introduced countless Americans to their country, to vast lands that previously existed only in the collective imagination. Despite being decommissioned in 1985 in favor of a faster and wider interstate highway system, Route 66 continues to capture our imaginations in the remnants of its past glory that remain today. Now, Route 66 boosters in all eight states (Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California) are gearing up to celebrate the iconic route on its centennial in 2026. Ahead of next year's anniversary, the Chicago Tribune will set out across Route 66 to introduce readers to the people and places it was designed to connect the entertaining characters and roadside oddities, the business owners trying to revitalize their pieces of history and the voices that had been previously obscured in the roadway's lore. In pursuit of the unknown, we're starting our journey at the farthest point from home, in Santa Monica, and working our way back to Chicago. Along the way, we'll explore whether the highway still has the power to unite a deeply divided country and learn what it has to tell us about the current state of our nation. Share your connection to Route 66 using the form below. Your responses may be published in a future Δ
New York Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
What Made Nat King Cole, and These 5 Songs, Unforgettable
In November 1956, Nat King Cole was given his own variety show on NBC. It drew major guest stars and got good ratings, but was abandoned just over a year later because it couldn't secure a single national sponsor; brands were too nervous about boycotts from racist viewers. 'Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark,' Cole observed at the time. He couldn't have been too shocked. Cole may have been one of the biggest pop stars of his time, charting 86 singles and 17 albums in the Top 40, but he was, after all, the first Black man to host a nationally broadcast program. (He referred to himself as 'the Jackie Robinson of television.') In 1948, when he moved into Los Angeles's all-white Hancock Park neighborhood, a cross was burned on his lawn. A few months before the TV show debuted, Ku Klux Klansmen attacked him onstage at his concert in Birmingham, Ala., shoving him off his piano bench. Those experiences and the story of the final episode of 'The Nat 'King' Cole Show' in December 1957 is now the focus of 'Lights Out: Nat 'King' Cole,' which is running through June 29 at New York Theater Workshop. Written by Colman Domingo, an Academy Award nominee for 'Rustin' and 'Sing Sing,' and Patricia McGregor, the theater's artistic director and the show's director, the play had a long gestation period, premiering in Philadelphia in 2017. It also had a Los Angeles run in 2019. Domingo described 'Lights Out,' which stars Dulé Hill as Cole, as a 'dark night of the soul' that explores 'the psychology of an artist.' Though today he's best known for his recording of the holiday perennial 'The Christmas Song' and for his daughter Natalie's technology-assisted duet with him, 'Unforgettable' (from her Grammy-winning album of songs associated with her father), Cole was an astonishing talent. 'With the sole exception of Louis Armstrong,' wrote the critic and historian Terry Teachout, 'he is the only major jazz musician to have been identically distinguished and influential as both an instrumentalist and a vocalist.' Ray Charles inducted Cole into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Frank Sinatra was a fan (and a pallbearer at Cole's funeral) and the piano titan Bill Evans called him 'probably the most underrated jazz pianist in the history of jazz.' Cole's relationship to race, though, was complicated, even confounding. He performed with an interracial band in the South, but also agreed to play for segregated audiences, to the dismay of his Black fans. He had a key role in organizing the 1963 March on Washington and at the time of his death in 1965 (from lung cancer at the age of 45), he was planning a production of James Baldwin's play 'Amen Corner.' 'I try to please as many people as I possibly can,' Cole once said, 'and if I find the people like certain things, I try to give them what they like. And that's good business, too.' McGregor said that the 'fever dream' structure of 'Lights Out' follows the 'past, present and imagining of the future' at a critical moment in Cole's story, with Sammy Davis Jr., a frequent guest on the TV show, serving as a 'trickster provocateur' poking at Cole's conscience. Domingo, who is also developing a movie about Cole that he called a 'more traditional biopic,' added that the show re-examines the musician's place in history. 'He knew the power of television,' he said. 'He knew that's part of the revolution as well. By showing up, putting on a tie, being graceful, singing lovely songs, he was actually advancing who we are as Americans.' In a recent video call (McGregor from home, Domingo from his dressing room on his last day of shooting a science fiction film, as yet untitled, directed by Steven Spielberg), the collaborators spoke about five songs that are central to the show and to Nat King Cole's groundbreaking career. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. 'Nature Boy' McGREGOR 'Nature Boy' was wildly popular, but there's something melancholy and strange in it that is a revelation of what was churning underneath Nat. We use that song to open up a portal into another world, into a different theatrical reality. It was very well known, but it's very different than most of his songs, which kind of wrapped you in this velvet hug. Its strangeness and its mystery felt like a really great song to establish that we weren't just going to show the on-air side of Nat, but it was going to be a revelation of his interior. DOMINGO It feels very personal and really an existential question that Nat has. 'Straighten Up and Fly Right' McGREGOR You can just swing and snap your fingers. It sounds like something out of 'Ocean's 11.' But it's also a kind of warning tale. Nat's father was a preacher, and this song links him to the way in which his father used the pulpit. If you peel back the layers a little bit, there's some lessons about strategies for survival and the way in which people wear masks. DOMINGO It's the idea of his psyche, of what has built the person that you are. Sometimes at those critical moments, you have to go back, and you're like, 'Oh, wait a minute — this is the lesson that my father gave me, the lesson that my mother gave me.' McGREGOR Colman is at an incredible moment in his career, and he chooses to do a piece like 'Sing Sing' when he could be doing 'Transformers 17.' But that's one of the things that this piece asks: When you have a platform, what do you say? 'Unforgettable' DOMINGO Of course, everyone remembers the fantastic album that Natalie Cole did as a tribute to her father, and 'Unforgettable' was a huge part of it. So what does Natalie put into this? What is her legacy? And his heartache of, was he there enough? Was he the right father? We watch Natalie transition from a 15-year-old girl to the Natalie Cole that we know, but we also know the complicated cost of that legacy for her. McGREGOR In that song, Natalie gives him permission to share his inner turmoil. The show posits that in trying to hold it all together, the stress and worry might have led to him passing earlier than he should have. In her own project, Natalie was trying to be in conversation with a father who passed too young, and to release him to be free — and know that even though their time was cut short, he would always be unforgettable in her mind's eye. 'The Christmas Song' DOMINGO By the time you get to 'The Christmas Song,' you've learned so much, and it's disrupted you in a way that you're going to hear the song in a very different way. Dulé is sweating and tear-soaked, and he's finally experienced and let go of some rage and some hurt. And then we deliver 'The Christmas Song,' but now you have a more vulnerable human being in front of you. You don't get to walk out with just that warm, cozy feeling. We're not allowing you to. McGREGOR It's the sentiment of how to be Black without all the blues. Now you understand the cost of grace in the face of American history and reality. You understand that there is no way to avoid the pain and the rage, and yet people still try to show up with hope and healing and connection. That song is like the crème brûlée top, with something much deeper underneath. 'The Party's Over' DOMINGO The show ends when Nat speaks his truth, but it's cut off with darkness. Then that's our coda — 'The party's over, it's time to call it a day / They've burst your pretty balloon and taken the moon away.' We have deconstructed this American icon to deconstruct America and deconstruct our souls. We've done our show, we've taken off our masks. Now it's your choice whether you speak your truth, whether you are active, where's your part in this revolution to liberate one another? We've done our job. Now it's your turn. McGREGOR In many ways, this show also examines the role artists play. If people leave the theater and just talk about what kind of dessert they want, we haven't done our job. We hope people leave with a sense of mission or something churning in them to figure out what it means for them to unmask, to take off their makeup, to wake up.
South China Morning Post
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
From Tin Hau to New York: Ted Lo's extraordinary jazz journey
I WAS BORN IN 1950 and grew up the third youngest of four boys in Tin Hau Temple Road, Causeway Bay. For a Chinese family, my parents were very Western. We never had Chinese music at home. Growing up, my father loved Nat King Cole and and grew up the third youngest of four boys in Tin Hau Temple Road, Causeway Bay. For a Chinese family, my parents were very Western. We never had Chinese music at home. Growing up, my father loved Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra , so we listened to swing, big band, that kind of music. My parents were always so supportive. By the time I was 12, we already had a band room with drums, bass and guitar so we could jam. I never studied, never had lessons, just banged on the drums. Advertisement At the time, the radio was all British rock and my oldest brother, Tony, who was three years older than me, was into The Beatles and Elvis Presley . He turned me on to Jimi Hendrix. We had a family band, The Dimensions, and in 1966 we won a television talent show sponsored by Sing Tao, with me on drums, Tony on guitar and brother Ambrose on bass, with my uncle also on guitar and a friend on vocals. The following year my youngest brother, Hank, joined on guitar as Tony had gone abroad. In the 1960s, Ted Lo played in family band The Dimensions alongside his brothers Tony, Ambrose, Hank, uncle Hardy Chan and friend David Fang. Photo: courtesy Ted Lo MY FATHER WAS AN ARCHITECT, so was my grandfather – it was a family business. My brothers also became architects, working with my father. They were all very good at drawing. But I don't draw well, it's not my thing. We had a piano at home, my mother played a little bit, and around the age of 13, so two years before I went abroad, I had lessons from Bading Tuason (the musical director of the Hong Kong Hilton from 1968 to 1995). I learned so much from him. He allowed me to sit in with him at times at the Eagle's Nest (nightclub at the Hilton). I was a kid. I was 13 years old. Imagine me jamming for some professional, the feeling, you know. My parents took us to bars and we saw (jazz bandleader) Tony Carpio , so was my grandfather – it was a family business. My brothers also became architects, working with my father. They were all very good at drawing. But I don't draw well, it's not my thing. We had a piano at home, my mother played a little bit, and around the age of 13, so two years before I went abroad, I had lessons from Bading Tuason (the musical director of the Hong Kong Hilton from 1968 to 1995). I learned so much from him. He allowed me to sit in with him at times at the Eagle's Nest (nightclub at the Hilton). I was a kid. I was 13 years old. Imagine me jamming for some professional, the feeling, you know. My parents took us to bars and we saw (jazz bandleader) Tony Carpio at the Repulse Bay Hotel . We were in awe. A young Ted Lo (right) and his musical family. Photo: courtesy Ted Lo I WENT TO THE Eric Hamber Secondary School in Vancouver, Canada, for a couple of years, and I saw a jazz organist playing in a restaurant inside a mall and asked him to teach me. I subbed for him for a couple of weekends and that was my first professional paying gig. I heard about the Berklee College of Music in Boston, in the United States, and my father said, 'Ted, I don't know how to advise you, I don't know anything about music.' It's a risky business. I was the first Chinese musician who actually got a degree at Berklee. A FEW NIGHTS AGO I had a concert and for the first time in my life I teared up on stage. I was telling the audience my most inspirational story. I graduated in 1976 and the following year I got a call to do a recording session in Los Angeles for an album (Identity) with Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira. I was overdubbing two songs. These days, this generation, if you want to do some overdubbing, you can do it anywhere in the world, just send the files. But back then that was a big deal for a jazz album. They had to fly me to LA. So the tracks are re-recorded, and you're just putting in some colours. Guess who the producer was? I had a concert and for the first time in my life I teared up on stage. I was telling the audience my most inspirational story. I graduated in 1976 and the following year I got a call to do a recording session in Los Angeles for an album (Identity) with Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira. I was overdubbing two songs. These days, this generation, if you want to do some overdubbing, you can do it anywhere in the world, just send the files. But back then that was a big deal for a jazz album. They had to fly me to LA. So the tracks are re-recorded, and you're just putting in some colours. Guess who the producer was? Herbie Hancock Ted Lo in Boston in the 1970s. Photo: courtesy Ted Lo So Herbie was my idol. Maybe my most influential pianist in the 1970s. So the session was going fine. He's a great producer. He's very, very chill. At the end, everybody left. I was waiting for my ride so we had a chance to talk. And then he went to the piano and played for me for about half an hour. The first song he played was his famous 'Maiden Voyage'. Not only that, he sang it for me. I didn't know it had lyrics, because he'd recorded an instrumental version. And he told me that his wife, Gigi, wrote the lyrics for it. So that was, I would say, the most inspiring jazz story for me.
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Lights Out: Nat 'King' Cole' Review: Dimming a Great Talent
When Nat King Cole performed 'The Party's Over' on his NBC variety show, he did it with a smile, as he seemed to do everything. But the song bitterly resonated on that particular broadcast, Cole's final outing as a host, having quit after just over a year's worth of struggles finding national advertisers. 'It's time to wind up / The masquerade,' he sang. 'Just make your mind up / The piper must be paid.' Written by Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor, the formally ambitious, if muddled, 'Lights Out: Nat 'King' Cole' takes place on that fateful Dec. 17, 1957, when the pianist and singer said goodbye to his audience. (Note that Domingo, who is famous as an actor these days, does not appear in the show.) The framing device is not unlike that of 'Goodnight, and Good Luck,' which is also set in a TV studio, and both shows look at a momentous taping as a mode of resistance against America's powers-that-be. But 'Lights Out' takes a very different tack from the George Clooney and Grant Heslov play's straightforward embrace of docu-like similitude . 'Some of you thought you were going to get a nice and easy holiday show,' Sammy Davis Jr. (Daniel J. Watts) informs the audiences of both the television studio and New York Theater Workshop, where the production is running. 'No! Welcome to the fever dream.' The musical unfurls in the minutes before Cole (Dulé Hill) is supposed to go on the air. Time dilates and contracts; guests and family members pop up; conversations are interspersed with musical standards. Davis, who had actually guest-starred on Cole's show a few months earlier, is ever-present here as a flamboyantly extroverted jester who might represent the id of the more restrained (at least publicly) Cole. The pinnacle of McGregor's production is a fiery tap number, choreographed by Jared Grimes, between the two men that lands halfway between duet and battle, and is set to 'Me and My Shadow.' Juxtaposing an irrepressible scratcher of itches and a debonair charmer as two forces of Black creativity, which the white establishment tried to contain in safe, acceptable boxes, is the show's best idea. Hill gives it life with a complex, layered performance as Cole, who is revealed to be channeling his anger and frustrations into a smooth, urbane exterior — a review of his show's premiere in The New York Times described him as having 'an amiable personality that comes across engagingly on the television screen.' (Both Hill and Watts were in the 'Lights Out' premiere in 2017, with the People's Light company in Malvern, Penn.) Unfortunately, the writing and direction do not match Hill's subtlety. Cole is jostled this way and that between past and present, fantasy and reality, as if he were on a runaway carousel, but his agitated free associating is written and staged in a herky-jerky manner. Guests including Peggy Lee (Ruby Lewis) and Eartha Kitt (Krystal Joy Brown) turn up, though their musical contributions feel perfunctory. The star's mother, Perlina (Kenita Miller), drops by. Cole manifests his younger self (Mekhi Richardson at the performance I attended), and also duets with his daughter, Natalie (Brown again), on 'Unforgettable' — a hit for Natalie in 1991, when she sang with her father via a recording he had made 40 years earlier. The intersection of personal history, politics and performance has long been an essential part of Domingo's work as a writer — he explored it successfully in his autobiographical play 'A Boy and His Soul' (2009), less effectively in the book he co-wrote for 'Summer: The Donna Summer Musical' (2018). Here he and McGregor resort to telegraphing in ways that may be intended to jolt but too often land awkwardly, as when Natalie cries 'I can't breathe' after she is brutally forced to smoke a cigarette from a sponsor brand. 'They are still digging Emmett Till's grave, and you're out here planting roses,' Davis hectors Cole, who replies that his job is to entertain. 'No, it's your job to reflect the times,' Davis continues. 'But, if that's what you are trying to teach the kids, young Billy Preston is waiting in the wings, ready to do his thing.' Lo and behold, the keyboard prodigy (Richardson, again), then 11, comes in for 'Blueberry Hill.' It's an excellent number, as many are in 'Lights Out,' though one wishes the money spent on a large, underused video screen had been dedicated to a few more musicians to better approximate the bold, pumping sound of Nelson Riddle's orchestra on the TV show. Still, it is in examinations of such performers as Cole that you find one of the keys to change and progress: a demonstration of unparalleled talent that could not be stifled.
Irish Independent
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Singer to perform for King at VE Day concert held near his former busking spot
Four days of celebration across the nation began on Monday to mark 80 years since victory in Europe was declared in the Second World War. Concluding the celebrations on Thursday evening, the Ugandan-born musician, raised in Newcastle, will perform Nat King Cole's Smile alongside a 45-piece orchestra and 30-person choir at Horse Guards Parade in London. The concert's location is close to Piccadilly Circus, which is where Ray used to busk while launching his music career. Ray said: 'I mean, when you think about it, it's crazy. I used to sing on the streets just up the road from here. To be performing at this event, on this stage, is a moment I genuinely never saw coming.' He added: 'I am so grateful to be part of this historic event, and singing such a classic song to remember the moment the Second World War ended. It's a real honour to be a part of the celebrations.' Actor Timothy Spall began VE Day commemorations in London on Monday by reading extracts of then prime minister Sir Winston Churchill's victory speech to the nation on May 8 1945. Monday also saw a military procession and flypast in central London as well as a street party held at Downing Street. UK Government buildings and departments will remember and thank those who fought with a silence at noon on Thursday, with other organisations invited to follow suit. Pubs and bars have been granted permission to stay open for longer to mark the anniversary. Venues in England and Wales which usually close at 11pm will be able to keep serving for an extra two hours to celebrate. Churches and cathedrals across the country will ring their bells as a collective act of thanksgiving at 6.30pm, echoing the sounds that swept across the country in 1945, the Church of England said. The VE Day party, presented by Zoe Ball, will air on May 8 from 8pm to 10pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
