UNFORGETTABLE?
Though rock is now filed firmly in the Heritage section alongside jazz and folk, its official history still rules our thinking about popular music. Everything started with Elvis Presley, the wisdom still goes, and before him there was only dross. Nat King Cole is one of the great victims of this belief, his decades of work reduced to a single function. Like Slade, Mariah Carey, The Pogues and Bing Crosby, he is a fixture of our lives in that narrow window between the middle of November and Boxing Day, when we hear his impossibly rich voice launch for the 74th year running into The Christmas Song, reminding us of chestnuts roasting on an open fire and Jack Frost nipping at our nose.
He deserves much more. Just as that effortlessly seductive voice still charms its way into our minds each year, his influence is more deeply ingrained in the culture than we would
