No Tomorrow Carian Cole

Capitol Records took This Is Sinatra!, a compilation album, into the Top Ten in early 1957, which probably prompted the label to assemble a similar collection, This Is Nat "King" Cole, later in the year. Consisting of tracks not previously issued on a Cole LP, the disc contains seven recent Billboard singles chart entries among its 12 selections – "Too Young to Go Steady" (which reached number 21), "Forgive My Heart" (13), "Nothing Ever Changes My Love for You" (72), "To the Ends of the Earth" (25), "I'm Gonna Laugh You Right Out of My Life" (57), "Someone You Love" (13), and "Never Let Me Go" (79) – while an eighth song, "That's All," was the B-side of the 1953 Top 20 hit "Lover, Come Back to Me!" "Too Young to Go Steady," which peaked in April 1956, turned out to be all that was really heard of a stage musical intended for Broadway, Strip for Action, with songs by Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson, which closed out of town. "I Just Found Out About Love" and "Love Me as Though There Were No Tomorrow," two more songs from that ill-fated show, are among the previously unheard tracks unearthed for this compilation.

In the days when recording artists did not write their own material, it was not unusual for them to record more material than actually fit into record companies' release schedules. As this album makes abundantly clear, that was the case with Nat "King" Cole. Between December 20, 1955, and January 21, 1955, Cole held a series of recording sessions with arranger/conductor Nelson Riddle. Cole was near the peak of his commercial appeal, but this was also a transitional period in the record business, with rock & roll coming in and claiming a big chunk of the pop singles charts. Though a Capitol Records press release refers to this material as "an unissued studio album," it's more likely that the recording dates were intended as singles sessions rather than constituting an album project…