Every Time I Feel The Spirit

On paper, a gospel album by preacher's son Nat King Cole recorded in his hometown of Chicago with a local church choir would seem like a sure thing. Why then is Every Time I Feel the Spirit such a disappointment? The blame cannot be put on the First Church of Deliverance Choir, which gives strong readings of some excellent spirituals, including "Ain't Gonna Study War No More," "Oh, Mary, Don't You Weep," and "I Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray." It must be ascribed to Cole himself, who sounds like he is overdubbing his part (though this apparently was not the case), especially because there seems to be no connection between him and the choir. Cole simply sings in his usual easy-going, well-articulated style, never seeming particularly involved with the songs' messages. He swings, but he never works up a sweat and gets soulful. For this reason, the best numbers are the slow ones like "Go Down, Moses" and "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," on which he can at least seem reverent. Still, despite its title, this is an album on which Nat King Cole never seems to have felt the spirit. Mercifully, he never did any more recording in this vein after the September 1958 sessions that produced the original 25-minute LP. But that presents a challenge to a reissue producer looking to expand the short disc with complementary bonus tracks for a CD reissue. James Ritz meets the challenge by plucking six rarities from the Cole catalog that have some sort of spiritual connection, even if they are not really gospel tunes. "The First Baseball Game" quickly makes the point that the mood has changed; it's a comic number full of puns combining baseball slang and Biblical stories and characters ("Adam and Eve were thrown out," etc.). "This Holy Love" and "Believe" are really about secular concerns, while "Peace of Mind" and "Easter Sunday Morning" touch on religion, but lightly. The closest thing to the sound and message of the earlier tracks is "The Lighthouse in the Sky," which features handclaps and a chorus, and which is deliberately placed at the end of the disc. Cole is much more in his element on these tracks, and they increase the value of the collection, especially since four of them -- "This Holy Love," "Peace of Mind," "Easter Sunday Morning," and "The Lighthouse in the Sky" -- are making their CD debuts here. ~ William Ruhlmann|