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The DuSable Black History Museum’s Harold Washington Wing, Chicago — CultureTechLens
Research Brief

Photo: TonyTheTiger, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Research Briefs

Nat King Cole — Love Is the Thing (1957)

CTL Thin Brief · CTL-TB-000115 · Published 2026-10-09

Thin Brief — a short evidence sketch, not a full research brief.

What makes Love Is the Thing a landmark?

Released by Capitol Records in 1957 and arranged and conducted by Gordon Jenkins, the album wraps Cole’s velvet baritone in lush strings, including definitive readings of “When I Fall in Love” and “Stardust.” SUPPORTED

Key facts

  • Nat King Cole was a singer and pianist who began his career with the King Cole Trio before becoming a solo star. SUPPORTED
  • Love Is the Thing was released in 1957 on Capitol Records. SUPPORTED
  • The album was arranged and conducted by Gordon Jenkins with full orchestral strings. SUPPORTED
  • It includes the standards “When I Fall in Love” and “Stardust.” SUPPORTED
  • The record exemplified the orchestral-pop vocal album that dominated adult listening in the 1950s. PROVISIONAL

Sources

  • AllMusic: Love Is the Thing album page
  • Capitol Records catalog
  • Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee biography — Nat King Cole

Evidence grades: VERIFIED — strong primary or multiple corroborating sources. SUPPORTED — credible, partly corroborated. PROVISIONAL — single source or general knowledge, uncorroborated.

Cite as: CultureTechLens, "Nat King Cole — Love Is the Thing (1957) (CTL-TB-000115)," 2026-10-09.

Source: CultureTechLens

From the Archive

The archive in pictures

The people, places, and institutions this work documents. Photographs from the CultureTechLens research record — rights-cleared, credited, and cited like everything else here.

The Overton Hygienic Building, 3619–6227 S. State St., Chicago — Anthony Overton’s Black Metropolis business headquarters — CultureTechLens
The Overton Hygienic Building, 3619–6227 S. State St., Chicago — Anthony Overton’s Black Metropolis business headquarters — CultureTechLensPhoto: Andrew Jameson, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Chess Records studio booth during restoration, Chicago — CultureTechLens
The Chess Records studio booth during restoration, Chicago — CultureTechLensPhoto: get directly down, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Ida B. Wells — portrait from ‘Women of Distinction’ (1893) — CultureTechLens
Ida B. Wells — portrait from ‘Women of Distinction’ (1893) — CultureTechLensPhoto: Public Domain (from ‘Women of Distinction,’ 1893), via Wikimedia Commons

Trust & evidence

Evidence before authority. CultureTechLens publishes its methods, its limits, and its corrections alongside its findings. Claims carry grades — VERIFIED, SUPPORTED, PROVISIONAL, DISPUTED, UNRESOLVED — and unknowns are never reported as zero.

Every claim graded. Every source named. Every correction public — see the corrections log.