"In case any had doubted, Nat King Cole the vocalist proved his vocal arts had reached the pinnacle of the craft in this massively popular, lushly orchestrated set of ballads."

The title says it. In case any had doubted, Nat King Cole the vocalist of popular song proved his vocal arts had reached the pinnacle of the craft in this massively popular, lushly orchestrated set of ballads. Gordon Jenkins scored his trademark soaring strings for a dramatic and atmospheric orchestration to underscore and envelop, not merely accompany, the exquisite vocals of Nat.

There's no brass section and no choir, only strings. This frees Gordon Jenkins to do some of his best work, distilling his style to its essence as the songs and Nat's vocals distill the subject of love to a romantic ideal. Here is love looked towards as an ideal and as something one is in; later, Nat and Gordon would be reunited to take this theme to the next stage with The Very Thought of You.

Despite how easily such work treads the line from romantic to schmaltz, Love Is The Thing proves incredibly successful and consistent. After fifty years and numerous recordings by other artists, the performances here of Stardust and When I Fall In Love are still definitive. There's a magic ambiance that just can't be recaptured by anyone else. Those two tracks would have made the project worthwhile, but there are still more wonderful moments, including a particularly enchanting When Sunny Gets Blue and a surprisingly good rendition of Fats Waller's normally quite upbeat Ain't Misbehavin' as a slow ballad.

It's All In the Game was a remake of a standard perhaps most popularized by Tommy Edwards, both before and again after Nat's recording. One example of Nat's way with a lyric and melody can be found in a lesser-known track, Maybe It's Because I Love You Too Much. In the lyric 'Maybe with a love so great / and a love so small' he phrases the first instance of the word love with an emphasis that intuitively would befit the word great, but melodically works on love; the actual effect brings the listener's musical emphasis to love and attention to expression drawn to the softer-spoken great, the listener intuitively carrying over his emphasis from the word love. And he goes right on to enlarge the word small, which again has a counter-intuitive effect to the listener. It all sounds quite instinctive to him, rather than calculated. Whichever it was, it is a sign of a master.

The title song may be the weakest of the lot, but it perfectly sums up the album's theme. Or thing?