Non Dimenticar

That song that Nat "King" Cole recorded in 1965, Non Dimenticar, sounds like a sigh of classic jazz wrapped in melancholy. The original version lasts three minutes and forty seconds, but in those few measures there is something that makes it different: Nat's piano not only accompanies, but dialogues with the voice as if they were two musicians on an intimate stage. It is not a piece that seeks to draw attention with virtuosity, but flows with a naturalness that seems taken from an ordinary afternoon in a Chicago club. The title, which in Italian means "do not forget," already anticipates that blend of nostalgia and tenderness that runs through the entire piece.

Nat "King" Cole was not born with the name that would make him famous. He was born as Nathaniel Adams Coles in Montgomery in 1919, but when his family moved to Chicago as a child, his father—a minister at a Baptist church—taught him to play the organ in the temple. That was his only formal musical training, but it was enough for him to absorb the jazz that floated in the Bronzeville neighborhood, where nightclubs buzzed with the sounds of Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines. By the mid-1930s, at just sixteen years old, he was already playing piano in those venues, and his brother Eddie joined as a bassist. It was in one of those places where someone called him "King," a nickname that stuck. By 1936, he was already recording his first records as leader of his trio, and although success was initially local, his style—clean, without excesses—ended up opening doors for him beyond Chicago. When he arrived in California years later, he already carried with him that blend of gospel tradition and swing that would define his career.