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Sweet Lorraine-Nat King Cole Trio (Cover)

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Published on 01 Apr 2023 / In Jazz / Trad. Jazz

Written in 1928, ”Sweet Lorraine” found modest popularity with a recording by Rudy Vallee and his Heigh-Ho Yale Collegians. In that same year clarinetist Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra made an instrumental recording of the song for the Vocalion label. Further recordings were made Isham Jones and His Orchestra (1932), and jazz violinist Joe Venuti (1933).
It was Teddy Wilson and His Orchestra’s 1935 Brunswick recording, however, that made the pop charts for one week in October, rising to number seventeen. For Teddy Wilson it would be one of the first of dozens of hits he would produce in the 1935-1937 time frame.
The endurance of “Sweet Lorraine”as a favorite among jazz performers may be attributed, at least in part, to Nat “King” Cole, who kept the song in the limelight with his popular recordings. Cole’s fondness for “Sweet Lorraine” began as a Chicago teenager listening to clarinetist Jimmie Noone play. This was undoubtedly sometime after Noone’s group was called “Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra,” as the Apex Club was raided and closed down for serving alcohol during prohibition in 1930. Nat was 13.

“Sweet Lorraine” would play a memorable part in Cole’s transition from piano player to vocalist. The legend, which also reveals the source of his royal nickname, is told by Leslie Gourse in the liner notes for The Nat ‘King’ Cole Trio: The MacGregor Years, 1941-1945. Initially Cole’smain interest was piano, but in 1938, while performing in a Los Angeles nightclub, a tipsy customer asked him to sing, and Cole refused.
The customer insisted. Bob Lewis, the club owner, told Nat to sing-or else. So Nat sang “Sweet Lorraine” ...[and the] customer and everyone else liked the way Nat sang. Bob Lewis put a tinsel crown on Nat’s head and said, “I crown you Nat ‘King’ Cole.”

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