Gregory Porter - Nat King Cole and Me

The Guardian 40

(Decca/Blue Note)

Gregory Porter has become jazz music’s biggest crossover star in decades without appearing to compromise. He sings standards, references 1960s civil rights anthems and allows his heavyweight hard-bop band plenty of space to improvise – while becoming a fixture on teatime telly and the Radio 2 playlist. This collection of Nat King Cole songs, however, presumably aimed at the Christmas market, sees him go the full Bublé. Instead of concentrating on Cole’s impressive jazz career – the 1940s piano/bass/guitar recordings on Capitol, the After Midnight album – here Vince Mendoza’s cloying arrangements for a 70-piece orchestra pay homage to the string-drenched showbiz Cole with a fidelity that is largely pointless. That said, a zingy big-band Ballerina works well, the sprightly small-group version of L-O-V-E is ace, while Porter does eke dark truths from Freddy Cole’s I Wonder Who My Daddy Is.