Love is wild. No question about it.

At no other time did love feel wilder than that night with … her. The first time our eyes met I was convinced she must have been looking at someone else. She began moving across the moonlit patio past small groups of friends and acquaintances she no longer had any interest in. When she walked up to me, I gulped and swallowed one of the ice cubes from my drink. Wild is love.

Capturing a moment is like trying to trap lightning in a bottle. Trying to salvage that moment for my imagination became an unpleasant task in the passing days after my first “meeting” with her, as the ice cube had rendered me silent and wholly hopeless. She was wearing a red dress. Or was it maroon?

As my fading imagination gave way to what might have been on that auspicious Saturday evening patio party, not only had I reconciled myself to the notion that the world might be filled with “Hundreds and Thousands of Girls” of which were beyond my reach, but I had given up putting ice in my drinks.

The cascading feelings of love can be lethal, especially when there’s a red dress involved.

Nat King Cole helped me through that night as I nursed my wounds. His effort to put together a narrative, to step outside of the box of simply providing songs or hits, was the perfect salve for the shattered soul. I needed a story, one with a happy ending, and Nat had just the thing.

1960’s Wild Is Love came out of Cole’s desire to “conquer Broadway.” He’d always wanted to present a sort of musical story with one interconnected narrative that would flow through each tune. Some call this type of thing a concept album. Some call it a book musical. Others call it folly.

While Cole called it the “biggest thrill” of his recording career, many others didn’t agree and liked Nat King Cole where they had him. Thank you very much. The notion of the baritone not aiming to produce radio-friendly hits (although he did anyway on this recording) but rather to produce a sort of storyline album was something that many weren’t ready for.