Gregory Porter pays homage to his hero, Nat King Cole

As a child, Gregory Porter took solace in the velvet voice of Nat King Cole. He’s now paying tribute to his idol, writes Ed Power

WHEN Gregory Porter arrived at San Diego State University on a football scholarship in the early 1990s, the first thing he did was seek out his new dorm room and “christen” it by playing his favourite artist at maximum volume.

“I was the only one there and I put on Nat King Cole. I’m blasting ‘The Song of Raintree County’ and everyone else comes in and goes ‘what is THIS?’ They were listening to Color Me Badd, A Tribe Called Quest, a lot of hip hop. They thought it was cool I had my own thing that they had never heard of.”