A king gets his due …

… ‘Straighten Up and Fly Right’ Review: Unforgettable - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Such a man is self-evidently worthy of a full-scale primary-source biography, but while several books have been written about Cole, none has come close to filling the bill. Now, however, we have the book we need, Will Friedwald’s “Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole.” Mr. Friedwald, who writes about music and popular culture for the Journal, is the author of several much-admired books about jazz and pop singers, and he has gone to endless trouble to pin down the facts about Cole’s life and work. While his prose occasionally runs to the slapdash, Mr. Friedwald knows everything there is to know about his subject and presents it in a readable fashion, and his biography will be the last word about Nat King Cole for many years to come.

I can still remember hearing the King Cole Trio on the radio when I was  very young. Grady and Hurst started on WPEN in 1946, when I turned 5.