Wild Is Love is a 1960
concept album by the American singer and pianist
Nat King Cole, arranged by
Nelson Riddle. The album chronicles a narrator's attempts to pick up various women before he finds love at the conclusion of the album. The album formed the basis for an unsuccessful musical, I'm With You, that starred Cole and was intended as a potential
Broadway vehicle for him. A television special also called Wild Is Love resulted from the album, and was shown in Canada in late 1961. The television special was not shown in the United States until 1964 due to the brief presence of physical contact between the
African American Cole and a performer of
Canadian European descent, Larry Kert, that was seen as offensive by commercial sponsors.[3]
The album was released at the advent of the
sexual revolution, Cole's biographer
Daniel Mark Epstein would subsequently write of the album that "The lyrics tell the story of a man's search for romantic love-its excitements and frustrations, joys and sorrows-with a forward, blunt emphasis on carnal lust, and an edge of cynicism that would have been wholly offensive only a few years earlier".[4]
The string background to Cole's narration on the album was written by
Ralph Carmichael, and marked the start of Carmichael's association with Cole as his work with Riddle waned. Cole had felt some rivalry with his fellow
Capitol Records artist
Frank Sinatra whose albums increasingly dominated Riddle's creative output.[5] One of Nat's most successful recordings, it reached #4 on Billboards Top LP chart.