Natalie Cole Has Found Her Place In The Center

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Natalie Cole, 7 p.m. Saturday, Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery, Woodinville; $34.50; 206-628-0888. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Most pop singers need a hit album to sell tickets. But since her 1991 smash comeback album, "Unforgettable, With Love," dedicated to her father, the great Nat Cole, Natalie Cole appears to have joined that rare circle who can pack the house whether they are selling discs or not.

Cole's show Saturday at Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery is close to being sold out, despite sluggish sales of her 1996 album, "Stardust," which is no longer even on the charts. Cole also has released a new single, the title track from the soundtrack of a new film, "A Smile Like Yours."

But she'll no doubt be doing the "Stardust" material at the winery. It's a hot ticket. The Ste. Michelle lawn is a wonderful place to take in a concert, with a bottle of wine, a picnic, and - with the romantic material Cole's doing - a romantic acquaintance. Cole appears with a full-string orchestra, per the marvelous arrangements on "Stardust."

The second-generation crooner has never sounded better. After years of toiling at the edges of jazz, pop/jazz and pop, often making a mess of her material (as well as herself - the mid-'80s found her addicted to cocaine), Cole finally seems to have found her center. It's right in the center of American popular song, where the classics are.

Not blessed with a particularly versatile instrument, Cole nevertheless has learned to use what she has. Her voice occasionally thins at the top, but when she digs into the best notes in her husky alto, she is on target, in control and warmer than she used to be. Cole clearly has studied the masters. On "Stardust," you can hear shades of her great crooning father, but also of Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McCrae and Dinah Washington.

Cole uses some of the best arrangers and soloists in jazz. When you sing in front of the charts of Alan Broadbent, Clare Fischer and John Clayton, to mention just three, it's hard to go wrong. Broadbent shared a Grammy with producer David Foster and Gordon Jenkins for "When I Fall in Love," which won a second award for Best Pop Collaboration.

But the bottom line for singers is making people believe in the lyric, and in you - selling a song. Cole can do the trick. She sings the classic, yearning ballad of youth, "Teach Me, Tonight," with big-time attitude, greased by a gritty and swinging sax section, arranged by Clayton. On an intriguing and little-known 1930 Rodgers and Hart tune, "He Was Too Good to Me," her voice is as silky as moonbeams. Not many singers brave the tough intervals of Tadd Dameron's jazz standard, "If You Could See Me Now," but Cole does it with panache, catching the tone of wounded pride and playing subtly with the melody, the way Billie might have.

The song that has won the most attention, of course, is a duet with the recorded voice of her father, "When I Fall in Love." I'm not a fan of this sort of electronic resurrection and found it tacky when she sang with a projected image of her father at her Paramount show a few years ago. Cole can stand on her own, just fine. But that quibble aside, this show should be pure - well, "Stardust," I guess.