I was looking for a song about summer and not finding much background information about any of the ones I thought of. I enjoyed Nat King  Cole’s recording “Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer” from the time it first appeared. The web told me next to nothing.

Then I noticed that this year is Nat King Cole’s hundredth anniversary. He’s certainly worth commemorating. YouTube’s collection of videos, many recently posted, shows his abiding popularity.

I generally prefer to write about a song’s composer and lyricist than about the singer who made it famous. But hardly anyone remembers them.

German conductor and composer Hans Carste  wrote the tune, with the words “Du spielst ‘ne tolle Rolle.” Willy Hagara recorded it in 1962, and it’s easy enough to find his version on YouTube. Just not much other information.

The only biography of Carste I could find doesn’t mention the song. He must have been successful enough in his own time,  but no one writing for the web has taken much interest.

Charles Tobias provided the English lyrics and Ralph Carmichael arranged the song for Cole. Carmichael is known as one of the pioneers of Christian rock music. He also provided music for numerous movies and TV shows. On the other hand, Tobias had no more lasting reputation than Carste.

The Andrews Sisters issued the first recording (1963), and several other singers had it in their repertoire. But everyone, it seems, associates “Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer” with Nat King Cole.

Cole recorded it as a single in 1963, which reached no. 6 on the Pop chart. That same year, it became the first track of his album of the same name.

Early life

Nathaniel Adams Coles, son of a Baptist preacher, was born in Montgomery, Alabama on March 17, 1919. Eventually, the family dropped the final “s” from their name. Two of his brothers, Eddie Cole and Frankie Cole, also became professional musicians, although neither came close to Nat’s success. The family moved to Chicago in when Nat was a young child.

All the Cole children took music lessons from their mother. Nat became organist at his parents’ church when he was 12. Cole had formal classical piano training but then discovered his passion for jazz. He dropped out of school at 15 to pursue his career as a jazz pianist. Only later did he specialize in singing.

In collaboration with his brother Eddie, he made his first professional recordings in 1936. Nat Cole called his first band the Rogues of Rhythm but achieved his first fame with the King Cole Trio.

I have encountered three different explanations for the name: that it came from the nursery rhyme “Old King Cole,” that a young woman crowned Cole as king during an after-hours performance at a night club, and that his publicist put a tinfoil crown on him and proclaimed him king. In any case, he joined Duke Ellington and Count Basie being known by a noble title.

The King Cole Trio and Cole’s solo career

Cole formed the King Cole Trio in 1937 in Los Angeles with  bass player Wesley Prince and guitarist Oscar Moore. When Prince was drafted in 1942, Johnny Miller took his place. Cole played piano and sang. It was about the only jazz group that had no drummer.

The trio started a tour of the East Coast and Midwest in 1939 and made its first recording in 1940. The song, Sweet Lorraine, became first a hit and then the trio’s theme song. It made the charts in 1943 after four years of touring.

Cole himself composed several of the hit songs, including “This Way Out” and “Straighten Up and Fly Right.” The latter, inspired by one of his father’s sermons, reached no. 9 on the Pop chart and no. 1 on the R&B chart.

Capitol Record’s marketing strategy at the end of the 40s called for Cole to concentrate more and more on his solo singing career and less on jazz and piano. The idea may have come as a result of Frank Sinatra’s successful launch of a solo career after leaving the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. The trio broke up in 1949. In the meantime, it enjoyed several major hits and had considerable influence on the jazz of the time.

Cole’s rendition of Mel Torme’s “Christmas Song” launched the solo phase of his career. Other major hits include “Mona Lisa,” “Unforgettable,” “L-O-V-E,” “Ramblin’ Rose,” and “Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer.” In all, his hits earned him 28 gold records.

For such a popular singer, it comes as a surprise that he only received one Grammy nomination, in 1958, and that someone else won.

Encounters with racism

It is ironic that so many black musicians gained stardom at a time when race relations in the US were at their worst. They all suffered indignities until the Civil Rights movement eventually outlawed Jim Crow practices.

In the late 1940s, Cole moved his family into the upscale and all-white Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. He received a letter saying that the residents didn’t want undesirables living in the neighborhood.

He wrote back saying that he and his family also opposed undesirables. And that if he ever saw any, he’d be sure to complain. He resisted attempts to remove him long enough that the neighbors accepted defeat, and eventually accepted the Coles.

The White Citizens Council attacked him on stage at a concert with a mixed-race audience in Birmingham, Alabama in 1956. He fell off a piano bench and injured his back. Remarkably for that era, his assailants were actually arrested and convicted.

Once the Civil Rights movement started, other black leaders rebuked him for being inadequately supportive. Slowly and reluctantly, he became more active in the fight against racial segregation.

His widow Maria said, “Anyone who thought Nat was an Uncle Tom clearly did not know the man.” A few years after his death, she sold the house to another wealthy black family.

The Nat King Cole Show

Cole became the first black performer to host a television show, The Nat King Cole Show, which ran on NBC in 1956. The show attracted top talent, including resident orchestra leader Nelson Riddle. Guests included Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte, Count Basie, Sammy Davis, Jr., Tony Bennet, Mel Tormé, Eartha Kitt, Ella Fitzgerald, and Peggy Lee. The public loved it.

The day before the show opened, he told an interviewer, “Negroes have been exposed to many single appearances but have not been given a chance to do a regular show before now. I’ve been waging a personal campaign, aiming at a show of this kind. I hit a few snags here and there but I didn’t give up the fight. It could be a turning point so that Negroes may be featured regularly on television.”

But in the 1950s, Southerners didn’t want to see blacks on television. Corporations feared losing customers, so not one of them sponsored the show. NBC ran it on a sustaining basis. That is, the network itself sponsored it. NBC chairman David Sarnoff ordered, “Find his show sponsors, or heads will roll.”

After a season successful in every way except sponsorship, the network wanted to continue to offer the show on a sustaining basis. Cole himself pulled the plug saying, “I guess Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.”

Because of these struggles and their respect for Cole’s aspiration, many of his guests appeared for minimum salary or even free.

Cole continued to appear on other television shows, including Ed Sullivan, Garry Moore, and Jack Benny. He appeared in several movies, including the Oscar-winning Cat Balou, which appeared shortly after his death.

Nat King Cole’s death and legacy

Audiences loved Cole’s rich, husky baritone voice. Cole attributed it to cigarettes. He smoked three packs a day to maintain it. Hardly anyone ever saw him without a cigarette in his hand. Doctors advised him to stop smoking after operating on his stomach ulcers in 1953, but he refused. He told a radio host shortly before his death, “If you want to sing, keep on smoking”

In December of 1964, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Despite radiation treatments and the removal of his left lung, he died on February 15, 1965.

He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for his recording work and one for his television show.

In 2000 Cole was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Early Influences category. Artists in that category made their mark before rock and roll became popular, but they had a great influence on its development.

In 1991, Nat King Cole had his last hit record when his daughter Natalie recorded “Unforgettable.” She mixed her rendition with his as a duet. Finally, he won a Grammy.

Sources:

Biographies of Nat King Cole on Biography.com, Encyclopedia of World Biography, and IMDb TV