In this week of jazz centennials (Mercer Ellington on the 11th, George Avakian on the 15th, Lennie Tristano on the 19th), today we celebrate Nat "King" Cole's. He was a great singer, especially given his limited resources and a popular entertainer. He was also a terribly influential pianist—Lennie Tristano and Hank Jones certainly listened to him—who helped establish the piano trio, albeit with a guitar instead of drums, the format Oscar Peterson, another Cole fan, maintained until mid-1959.
Cole recorded a lot with his trio, both for commercial release (for Decca, and later Capitol) and for radio broadcast (or transcriptions). Among the latter, there is a recording called "Miss Thing", effectively a reduction to the trio of the Count Basie Orchestra side "Miss Thing (Part II)", which shows a lesser known aspect of Cole's musicianship.
Basie's "Miss Thing (Part II)" (early 1939)
Cole's "Miss Thing" (late 1943)
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