This Live at the Circle Room date has been issued before, but the bonus material of the same band from a later date makes this an extra special set. For starters, the Circle Room, in the Hotel La Salle in Milwaukee, was the town's premier jazz spot in 1946. The first 17 tracks on this CD come from four performances between September 21 and 25 of that year. Cole, with Oscar Moore and Johnny Miller, had begin his singing career in earnest, and playing in front of a lounge crowd seemed like the most natural thing in the world for him. Indeed, as bottles click, and the periodic murmur of voices in the foreground appear in the mix, the listener will be transported into Cole's magical space. From Ellington's "C Jam Blues," to "I'm in the Mood for Love," "I'm Thru With Love," and "Sweet Georgia Brown," the Cole trio kicks it with grace and elegance.

From HearMusic's Opus Collection line comes Stepping Out of a Dream, a collection of Nat King Cole's higher quality songs as deemed by the compilation experts. The collection focuses on the work from the '50s and '60s, making only passing reference to his earlier piano work. The feature that sets this compilation apart from the numerous other Cole retrospectives is the song selection. The producers avoided the most obvious choices and the standards of Cole's career, replacing them with a number of basic standards from the jazz repertoire imbued with his outstanding sense of delivery and timing.

Ghostlight Deluxe, an imprint of Ghostlight Records, will release For Centennial Reasons: 100 Year Salute to Nat King Cole – the new album from the John Pizzarelli Trio – in physical, digital and streaming formats on Friday, February 8. Following high-profile collaborations with Sir Paul McCartney and Michael McDonald, Pizzarelli returns to his roots to honor his hero, the legendary jazz/pop vocalist and pianist Nat King Cole, whose centennial is being celebrated around the world this year with various concerts, books and recordings. For Centennial Reasons… completes an epic trio of Pizzarelli albums saluting Cole, starting with Dear Mr. Cole, which helped put Pizzarelli on the map as an influential jazz guitarist and singer in 1994, and continuing with P.S. Mr. Cole, which cemented his legacy five years later.

For all the resurgence in interest in Nat King Cole since 1991, when his daughter Natalie recorded a duet patching her new vocal with his from 40 years earlier and scored a gold-selling hit, Capitol Records lacked a single-disc hits collection that covered Cole's most successful singles for the label. This 22-track, 62-plus minute CD/cassette collection does the trick…

Boasting incredible sound quality and an impressive track listing, 1947, Vol. 3 is a wonderful collection of some of Nat King Cole's finest recordings from the late '40s. Despite his amazing piano playing, Cole's charming voice is the real star of this album. His smooth croon makes overplayed standards like "Dream a Little Dream of Me" feel fresh again. With minimal accompaniment and only one self-penned track (the humorous piano showcase "The Geek"), the arrangements had a lot of potential for failure. But instead these are some excellent renditions of songs that have mostly fallen out of the American public's interest. Anyone looking for a quality collection of Cole's performances, or even a good collection of classic vocal jazz, should definitely try to give this album a listen, as it really is quite good.

Nat King Cole could charm most listeners by simply singing a few lines from the phone book. His delivery is so intoxicating that even less-than-stellar material doesn't cause so much as a blink of the eye. This is true with Classics' collection of some of his 1947-1949 cuts, where hardly a classic standard or hit is in sight. What one does get, though, is a generous dose of Nat Cole and the trio's slow-riffin' best . While ranging from the ballad perfection of "How Lonely Can You Get" and "Lost April" to svelte blues sides like "My Mother Told Me," Cole, guitarist Irving Ashby, and bassist Johnny Miller show how they perfected the piano trio template forged by the singer's first group with guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Wesley Prince…

The Ultimate Christmas Album, Vol. 5 collects more pop and rock holiday tunes, this time venturing further into the '70s and '80s with songs like Paul McCartney & Wings' "Wonderful Christmastime," Hall & Oates' "Jingle Bell Rock," and Barry Manilow's "It's Just Another New Year's Eve." The collection still features traditional pop chestnuts, including Dean Martin's "A Marshmallow World," Johnny Mathis' "The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You)," and Andy Williams' "Sleigh Ride," but this volume's overall feel is more contemporary than classic. Other highlights include Manhattan Transfer's "A Christmas Love Song," the Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping," the Tokens' "Little Drummer Boy," and the Jackson 5's "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." If The Ultimate Christmas Album, Vol. 5 isn't necessarily the most coherent volume in the series, it's certainly one of the most interesting.

Nat King Cole possessed one of the most accessible and appealing voices of any singer in the 1950s. This ballad-oriented set puts the emphasis completely on his voice (there is no piano playing or any hint of his jazz-oriented past) and features Cole accompanied by Gordon Jenkins' sweet arrangements for a string orchestra…

Yannick Bovy, the young cronner all the way from Belgium together with Mr. Cole’s enormous repertoire, this musical celebration will surprise you with a life unforgettable hits and swing you to the moon. To refresh all the great memories with Nat King Cole, Yannick also released his album “Yannick Bovy Celebrates Nat King Cole” as a tribute to Nat King Cole’s unparalleled repertoire and gained rave reviews from fans around the Globe.

In 1954, Capitol Records released the 10" LP collection Eight Top Pops, compiling eight songs that had appeared on singles by Nat King Cole during 1952. The first two, "Somewhere Along the Way" and "Walkin' My Baby Back Home," were the biggest hits, both reaching number eight in Billboard. "Because You're Mine," Cole's cover of the Mario Lanza movie song (done in a far more relaxed style than Lanza's, of course), was also a major hit, reaching number 16. "Faith Can Move Mountains" and "The Ruby and the Pearl" were somewhat less successful, but still lodged in the Top 30, as did the B-sides "Funny (Not Much)" and "I'm Never Satisfied." The only one of the eight songs not to earn a chart placing was "A Weaver of Dreams," the B-side of the single "Wine, Women and Song." In 1963, Capitol expanded Eight Top Pops into the 12" LP Top Pops by adding two tracks at the end of either side of the original release. These four songs all came from an EP recorded by Cole in 1954, on which he covered hits by other performers, including Doris Day's "If I Give My Heart to You," the De Castro Singers' "Teach Me Tonight," and Perry Como's "Papa Loves Mambo".