How “Sweet Lorraine” made him a singer

The King Cole Trio began as an instrumental group. Cole played the piano, Oscar Moore the guitar and Wesley Prince the bass, and for a while that was the whole act.

The story

The legend says that a customer who had had a few drinks demanded that Cole sing “Sweet Lorraine”. Cole told it differently: a customer wanted a song he did not know, so he sang “Sweet Lorraine” instead. Either way, people heard him, asked for more songs, and he obliged.

I started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that’s just the way it came out.

He said that in an interview for the Voice of America, around 1956.

The record

The trio recorded “Sweet Lorraine” in 1940, and it was his first hit. He came back to it in 1956, with the trio, for the all-jazz album After Midnight.

The photograph above: Cole at the piano with a score, New York, about June 1947, by William P. Gottlieb (public domain).