Diana Krall
All For You 
1996 DK
Catalog #IMPD182
compact disc, cassette
release date 3/12/1996
Impulse! Records

Diana's website

All For You is Diana Krall's moving tribute to the great Nat King Cole.

(from the liner notes) Scene: A semi-dark recording studio in Manhattan. Time: Two-thirty in the afternoon -- half past breakfast, if you live on Jazz Standard Time. Benny Green is sitting patiently at the Hamburg Steinway in the piano booth; Tommy LiPuma, the producer, is slumped in a chair in the main studio, fidgeting with his headphones. ("I like to be right in the middle of things. Too many distractions in the control room. Too much stuff to think about.") The shy-looking blonde in the corner booth, waiting for her cue to sing, is Diana Krall. This is her recording session, but you wouldn't know it. She acts as if she were the least important person in the room.

A disembodied voice slates the take: "O.K., we're rolling. If I Had You, Take five." Green tosses off four lean bars of intro; LiPuma rests his head in his hands, ready to listen. And all at once, the air is filled with a sound that is soft and warm and strangely knowing, floating out of the studio monitors like the smoke from a film-noir cigarette: I could show the world how to smile/I could be glad all of the while/I could change the gray skies to blue/If I had you... .

That's the blonde.

Produced by Tommy LiPuma

Recording Dates: Oct 3 - 8, 1996 at The Power Station, NYC

Recorded and Mixed by Al Schmitt

Mixed at Schnee Studios, Los Angeles, CA

Mastered by Doug Sax at The Mastering Lab

Hamburg Steinway D#0330 and piano technical service provided by Pro Piano New York.

There were two Nat King Coles, though most people only remember one. The famous Nat Cole was the balladeer with the taffy-rich voice, a pop idol whose recordings of "Unforgettable" and "Nature Boy" and "Mona Lisa" are playing on a hundred easy-listening stations somewhere in America at any given moment. The forgotten Nat Cole was one of the three or four best pianists in the history of jazz, a deceptively easygoing virtuoso whose crystalline solos and dead-center swing left their mark on a hundred distinguished admirers, including Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans. Put them together and you get a protean genius who influenced singers and instrumentalists in equal measure -- just as he appealed, Louis Armstrong-like, to everyone from casual listeners to connoisseurs. He was, in Duke Ellington's perfect phrase, beyond category, and when he died, the world wept.

The two Nat Coles came together in the King Cole Trio, for a decade the most popular combo in jazz. Cole, guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Johnny Miller forged a sound that has been imitated but never duplicated, an irresistible mixture of crisp ensembles, no-nonsense solos and sly group vocals, welded together by Cole's come-hither singing. No sooner did "All for You" and "Straighten Up and Fly Right," the trio's first Capitol singles, hit the jukeboxes in 1943 than Nat Cole became, and remained, a star. He broke up the trio eight years later to concentrate on stand-up singing, but the King Cole Trio's hundreds of 78s remain a monument to just how good -- and how smart -- pop music can be.

All for You is a tribute to the King Cole Trio by a woman who is better equipped than any other jazz musician of her generation to evoke the spirit of Nat Cole. Diana Krall, who listened eagerly to Cole's records as a child, grew up to be that rarest of birds: a singer-pianist as comfortable and distinctive in one role as the other. You couldn't prove it by her; Krall's modesty is a byword in the business. But her colleagues know better, and are quick to say so. "She plays all that piano," guitarist Russell Malone says, shaking his head and grinning, "and then she sings like that! I don't think she knows how good she is."

One of the things that makes this album so special is the fact that it was recorded by a working group. Diana, Russell and bassist Paul Keller spent a whole summer on the road before going into the studio last October, and it shows: they play like three people with one musical mind. That's what jazz musicians mean when they say a group is "tight," and this group is as tight as the wedding ring on a fat man's finger. Most producers would have teamed Diana with a couple of big-name session players from New York or Los Angeles, but the thought never occurred to Tommy LiPuma. "Oh, God, no," he says, grimacing. "No way. The only way you could have made this record is with these guys. Can't you hear the difference? This is a band."

The instrumentation is worth mentioning, too. It isn't easy to make a drummerless trio work. You can't coast, not even for eight bars. You have to dig deep into the beat all night long. But when everything clicks, the results are worth it, the jump tunes swing harder; the ballads take on an intimate, confidential feel. And this is a very intimate record. Close your eyes and listen. You could be sitting in a smoky club at two a.m., the hour when everybody has gone home except the serious listeners and the people with nothing to go home to but trouble.

Which brings us to Diana Krall's voice. It doesn't sound like Nat Cole, or anybody else. I once said it sounded like wild honey with a spoonful of Scotch, and Diana liked that, though she doesn't make any great claims for her singing. "I've always been very shy about it, " she says, "and I tried to avoid it whenever I could. I got more work because I could sing, but I didn't like doing it in lounges as a single. I didn't feel I had a clear, precise voice -- a pretty voice." She's right. It isn't pretty. It's beautiful. It's steeped in sorrow and the blues, and even when she's obviously having a ball, somehow you know she knows a thing or two about trouble. Yes, she plays piano like a funky angel; yes, she can swing you into bad health. But she can also put a cold hand on your heart and remind you that love hurts, and there aren't many people who can do that. If Nat Cole could have heard Diana Krall do his songs, he would have smiled that wonderful smile of his; he would have known how good she is, even if she doesn't.

Diana Krall Vocal, Piano
Russell Malone Guitar
Paul Keller Bass
Benny Green Piano
Steve Kroon Percussion
Tommy LiPuma Producer
Al Schmitt Engineer, Mixed Engineer