So What’s Next, Natalie? : Natalie Cole wooed hundreds of unlikely fans with a novelty album of dad Nat’s songs. Her new album tries to gently pull along audiences to the next stage of her music. But she’s not forgetting her pop-R&B; roots

Natalie Cole calls it a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” position.

Her last album, 1991’s “Unforgettable--With Love,” was by far the biggest of her career, selling 8 million copies and winning seven Grammys. But how to follow it up posed an inevitable dilemma. She had temporarily set aside her characteristic blend of R&B; and pop to do what was, in effect, a novelty album, lovingly re-creating the standards made famous by her father, Nat King Cole.

Should she milk that same concept for another set this time and risk being seen as an opportunist capitalizing on her dad’s image? Or return to a more contemporary style and just abandon all the traditionalists and jazz fans who adored the last album?

Cole managed to find a middle road.

“Take a Look,” which hits stores on Tuesday, is a generous, 18-song assortment of standards that aren’t quite so standard. Many of them are obscure, and only a few of them were ever sung by Nat King Cole. “Unforgettable’s” producers, Tommy LiPuma and Andre Fischer, have again set Cole’s mellifluous tones in a lush, jazzy setting, with selections that range from obvious torch classics (“Cry Me a River”) to less familiar tunes such as “The Swingin’ Shepherd Blues” (recorded previously only by Ella Fitzgerald) and even a 1966 message ballad (the title track, first cut by Aretha Franklin).

This way, Cole gets to take a few chances and keep the grandparents crowd among her fandom a little longer--though she plans to return to modern pop again eventually, as she explained in this recent interview:

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Question: This new album seems in a way like a half-sequel to “Unforgettable”--very similar in tone and design, but not quite as high concept.

Answer: Yeah, that’s what it is. When we got ready to do this album, I had three options, basically--I had an option to do “Unforgettable Vol. II,” I had an option to go back to R&B; and pop, or I had the option of segueing into something similar to “Unforgettable” but taking it maybe a couple of levels further. And I chose the last one, because I think it would have been a mistake to do the R&B-pop; thing so soon after this.

And I think it would equally have been a mistake to do a “Vol. II,” because it would create such a stigma in my career. I’ll never totally get away from being who I am, which first, to many, is the daughter of Nat King Cole, which became even more intensified with the “Unforgettable” album. And if I did a Vol. II, to some people it would be like, “Oh, so she’s now really gonna exploit her father’s name.” (Laughs) So you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, in a way.

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Q: Did you ever get a definitive handle on just who “Unforgettable” sold to? I’m sure you didn’t do a demographic study or anything, but . . .

A: Yeah, they did. They were amazed. Tower Records was the first indication that the record was going out to all kinds of people that they had never seen buy records before. When they gave us the first report, they said it was really amazing to see a 60-year-old man standing in line with the same record as a 20-year-old.

It was interesting looking at the Billboard charts. I was like back and forth with Skid Row. It was so funny, but it was great, because it was almost like the business needed something like this to happen. It was so odd and so out of the ordinary and it was so delicious to see the supposed old-world, old-fashioned, old-timey music competing with hard rock, heavy metal or pop.

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Q: You’ve said that “re-establishing my musical personality” was your theme for the new album. What did you mean?

A: When I did “Unforgettable,” it wasn’t appropriate for us to take liberties with that music. There had to be kind of a fine line between what had made it so great and the fact that a woman was singing it. We changed some of the arrangements, but not too much. It was all about subtlety and little nuances. But everything basically stayed exactly the same.

And in my show, which I’ve been doing for the past year and a half, I took myself totally out of it. I didn’t do any of my own material; I did all my father’s. And for somebody who’s had a career for 17 years, that’s a big shock.

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Q: By the end of your tour were you starting to rue the day you’d ever come up with that concept?

A: No, no, I didn’t rue the day. But it does carry with it some pluses and minuses, it really does. This one Egyptian lady came up to me while I was in Florida and said, “Oh, please don’t stop singing your father’s songs!” Which means (she indicates a bad taste in her mouth) . . . oh, forever ?

I get all these people who are my parents’ age who just love me for doing this, but I have to kind of pull them along too to the next phase; otherwise, I guess they’ll just stay stuck. And these are the same people--that’s probably why they don’t buy records, because they like what they like, and no one else makes that kind of music anymore so they just play their old stuff over and over and over again. People who maybe don’t like to change, they like the feeling that that music gives them. They like the space that it puts them in. It reminds them of better times in their lives too. So I can understand it. But I just can’t do it forever.

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Q: Had you decided ahead of time that you were going to do just a handful of songs associated with your father on “Take a Look”?

A: Sort of. If you notice, I also chose songs that, unless people really know my dad’s stuff, they don’t know which ones those are. They don’t jump out at you. There are no signature songs on there. The only one that might be a signature song for someone who’s a more-than-commercial fan of Nat King Cole would be a song called “Let There Be Love,” which a lot of people should know if they really were into him.

But there are quite a few songs that he did. “I Wish You Love”--people don’t know he recorded that one. “Crazy He Calls Me” he recorded, and “This Will Make You Laugh,” which didn’t even come out until recently on the “Mosaic” disc, and “Calypso Blues,” which is a real crazy little song. And that was about it. Oh, “Too Close for Comfort” he sang with Ella Fitzgerald, but I don’t think he ever recorded it--they just sang it on his television show.

The oldest song is probably a Billie Holiday song from the ‘30s, and the newest is an Aretha Franklin tune from the ‘60s. I wanted to pick some things that were a little more obscure. Not all of it, because there are quite a few songs in there that are well-known, like “As Time Goes By,” but there were also a lot of songs that people probably have never heard of. And that in itself is like taking a risk that wouldn’t have been any different than if I had just put a brand-new song on there.

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Q: Do you think you might go back and do another modern R&B-pop; album again, like maybe even next time?

A: Oh, sure. Definitely. This is like wardrobe. . . . I feel very fortunate that I am familiar and knowledgeable of different types of music. Now, I don’t know if I can do them all well. But I would hate to look back on my life and go, “You know, I wanted to do a rock ‘n’ roll album. I should have and I never did.”

One of these days, I’d like to put together a revue of all my music, which would probably turn into a marathon. There’s a couple of hit songs from almost every phase of my career. At the same time, visually, if you don’t handle it properly, it could be a cacophony of craziness, because there’s just so many different kinds of music. To go from “Pink Cadillac” to “Mona Lisa” you’ve gotta be able to do that in some kind of way that the audience doesn’t go, “I’m outta here.”

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Q: You’re coming up on the 10th anniversary this fall of when you first sought help for your substance abuse and had the well-publicized big turnaround in your personal life. Will you be doing anything special to celebrate the anniversary?

A: Knowing me, I’ll probably be somewhere working. (Laughs) I don’t know that I’m gonna mention it or anything. I’ll just quietly thank God that I’ve been able to--that I’ve made the choice to--stay sober. I’m really happy. I’ve also met a few young people in the business in their early 20s who have introduced themselves--and I didn’t even know that they were not sober--and they come up to me and they’re very sweet, and they start talking about the program. It’s funny, because you don’t realize that people look at you the way you used to look at other people when you were younger. . . . And I see that in their faces.

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Q: Sort of an elder statesmen thing?

A: Absolutely, yeah, it is. But it’s great. . . . Because I didn’t have that when I was younger. No one I knew had anyone to talk to about that, because everyone was so busy doing it. (Laughs) No one was sober long enough to be able to say, “Yeah, I’ve got 10 years’ sobriety and let me talk to you about . . . “ We didn’t know anybody like that. Everybody was doing the same.

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Q: So times have really changed in that anyone who’s survived has a lot of fellow survivors to reminisce with, whereas once it might have seemed pretty lonely to be a pop music celebrity in that position?

A: Yeah. Well, there but for the grace of God, you know. I really should be six feet under. And Bonnie Raitt and I have talked about that. We should have been dead a couple of times; that’s why we’re both really like cats with nine lives. There’s really no sound reason for us to still be here. (Laughs) So it must be a miracle, must be because God just has something for us to do; we’re just still supposed to be here. But there are also a lot of our friends who aren’t. And there are also those who are still here, but they’ve lost a lot of the joy of what it is to be sober and to recover and to live a different kind of life. A lot of them have become bitter.

Even when you end up in the process of recovery, it’s not a given that you’re gonna be happy. And I’m happy, and that’s a blessing too. There are all kinds of ways of getting back, but the best way to come back is 100%.