Celebrating Nat King Cole

Queen’s Hall 27/6/26

Celebrating Nat King Cole with Down for the Count Orchestra

Down for the Count Swing Orchestra were just the band to explore and celebrate the musicianship of Nat King Cole and remind me what an exceptional performer he was. Their conductor, Mike Paul-Smith, has a cosy Dad vibe that puts the audience at ease from the get go, with personal anecdotes such as his wife requesting music by Nat King Cole during labour. For the first four months of her life their daughter’s crying was calmed by those same tracks. The orchestra first performed this show at a summer concert in 2019.

The band began when Mike Paul-Smith and friends from Aylesbury Music Centre got together in 2005 to play jazz and swing music, primarily for weddings and private events. In 2012 they began playing for vintage dance events in London and a year later appeared at Twinwood Vintage Music and Dance Festival. Since 2019 they have toured UK regional theatres, performing over 100 concerts each year while still maintaining a range of line-ups for private events.

The line-up for this tour included a sixteen piece swing band combo of brass and reed instruments, drums and piano, with the addition of a string section: violins, violas and cellos, and a harp. There were also a double bass and guitar, the instruments which accompanied Nat King Cole in his early career as a jazz pianist. The King Cole jazz trio began playing in small bars in his home town of Los Angeles, where there was no room for a drum kit. Vocals were provided by Marvin Muoneké, who describes himself as ‘the young man with the old soul’. His voice is rich and deep with a mellowness that reminds you of Nat King Cole’s voice but is entirely Marvin’s own. Sharing the stage with Marvin was Lydia Bell, who takes inspiration from the great female vocalists, Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee.

The concert opened with ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’, followed by the Lerner and Loewe classic ‘ On the Street Where you Live’. Louder, faster, toe-tapping numbers then alternated with softer ballads throughout. The string section added a romantic bitter sweet backing to Marvin’s rendition of the Hoagy Carmichael song ‘Stardust’, while a solo saxophone duetted with Lydia Bell in one of Nat King Cole’s most famous songs ‘When I fall in Love’. This called to mind the award winning virtual duet by Natalie Cole in 1996 with her father’s recording of the song from 1956. Very quickly the audience understood we were in expert hands to enjoy some classic hits.

Mike Paul-Smith was an excellent compere, guiding the audience in between songs through key moments in Nat King Cole’s short career. The King Cole Trio recorded with Capitol Records in Hollywood in the 1940s, the only black act on their label. In 1956 Cole became the first African American to host a TV show, which only lasted one year through lack of sponsorship. Nat later recorded over 1600 songs in 28 studio albums. In 1947 he was given the song ‘Nature Boy’ by Eden Ahbez, a songwriter who lived a hippy life in Los Angeles. When Nat needed Ahbez’s permission to record the song he had difficulty tracking him down, eventually finding him living beneath the first L in the Hollywood sign. The recording became a number 1 hit for eight weeks in 1948.

Nat King Cole’s main arrangers were Nelson Riddle, who created arrangements to complement his voice such as ‘Mona Lisa’. Others included Gordon Jenkins, who created lush string backings for ballads such as ‘Stardust’, and trumpeter Billy May, who favoured a brass driven rhythmic energy. Mike Paul-Smith and his co-director Simon Joyner also create their own arrangements for the orchestra to enable various solos from Mike or Tom Berge on piano, Chris Adsett on flute or saxophone and the trio members on guitar and bass.

The orchestra have a dedicated fan base in Scotland for their summer and Christmas tours, which include Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Perth. Over half the audience had attended a concert before. They have released a number of CDs and plan to head back to the studio to record two new albums, Swing into Christmas’ to be released before the 2026 Christmas tour and a collection of classics from The Great American Songbook, due out in 2027. At the interval and again at the end of the concert, Mike Paul-Smith gave a plug for the Kickstarter crowd funding campaign to raise the funding needed for these recordings.

Nat King Cole disliked Rock n Roll, writing a parody called ‘Mr Cole Won’t Rock n Roll’ that included references to his own recordings and popular pop songs mashed together. This brought a hugely enjoyable concert to an appropriate conclusion.