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.
