Distance theology degree

Natalie Cole is back on the music charts after a three-year absence with a new jazz album. And she's a wife again, celebrating her one-year anniversary to Bishop Kenneth H. Dupree.

Ask a Woman Who Knows is Cole's first album on Verve Records. For the album, she chose a number of little-known, mostly jazz tunes by such artists as Dinah Washington, Dee Dee Warwick, Carmen MacRae, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Barbra Streisand. The title cut of the album, Ask a Woman Who Knows, is a tune described as an obscure Dinah Washington classic.

"It was fun for me to find things I'd never heard of," Cole told JET during a recent interview. "What was nice was that even though the songs are obscure, the artists who did them are not. My father did a bunch of songs that no one ever heard."

She went through 150 songs to decide which 12 to 14 would make it on the album. "I just sat and put them on my computer and started listening," she recalled. "They were quite interesting. If I liked it enough after the first minute, I would keep listening."

Besides selecting unique, rarely heard tunes, Cole used jazz legends such as Joe Sample, Roy Hargrove and Christian McBride to help out with Ask a Woman Who Knows. Her longtime friend Tommy LiPuma produced the album. Cole also enlisted the support of jazz vocalist Diana Krall. The two did the duet Better Than Anything.

"I saw her at Carnegie Hall and knew I wanted to work with her," Cole said. "I was really impressed with her grasp of jazz. She has great phrasing in her piano playing and it shows up in her singing."

Cole described the whole effort as "fun." "I didn't want to pick serious or too deep. The album is intimate. I love the fact that it lends itself to romantic settings. It's relaxed, but not too relaxed. It puts you in a nice place. It's about different aspects of love, not all gushy-gushy. There is no `Oh baby you left me and I just fell out.' That's why I love that first love song, I've Got Nothing Better To Do. The woman in the song is really mortified that they've broken up, but she's determined not to show it."

The biggest vocal challenges, she recalled, was making sure she did justice to the material of all those legends who recorded the songs initially. "We tried to keep the essence of what made the songs so special and bring them into a new realm."

In addition to the female artists who recorded some of the songs initially, Cole's new effort also features Michael Franks' tune Tell Me All About It and the Sergio Mendes composition So Many Stars with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman.

Her fans around the country are hearing Cole sing the songs from the new album as well as her previous musical efforts as she's been out on tour for months and will continue for the next few months.

The touring and recording hasn't interfered with her home life in both Los Angeles and Nashville. No, she said, she's in a wonderful place now emotionally and professionally. Next month, she and Kenneth H. Dupree, a Baptist bishop in Nashville, celebrate their one-year anniversary.

She describes Dupree as a man who's totally secure, trusting and understanding. "Otherwise, we wouldn't be together," she said. "The separation is a big challenge. And if I wasn't married to Kenneth and he wasn't the kind of person he is, we wouldn't have gotten married. He's truly understanding, very secure and he's the kind of person who doesn't have to have that kind of constant attention from his woman. It's not something he necessarily needs 24/7. We talked about that early on. And when I'm in that work mode, as much as I want to be there with him, I just can't. I can't be there until I get there. That's just the way it is. You have to do a lot of romantic phone conversations, stuff like that. You work what works for the two of you, and it works for the two of us. We talk several times a day. We're in constant communication, and it's very comforting to me."

Dupree has served as pastor of the Victory Church since 1989. She pointed out that he, too, has a very busy schedule that calls for him to travel, but not as much as she does.

And he gets along well with her son, Robbie who's pursuing a master's degree in music and theology at Belmont University in Nashville. "Robbie and Kenneth have bonded in a great way. It's great for Robbie being there. He's got a great kind of security down there. He loves it down there."

Living in both cities hasn't presented a problem for Cole. As she pointed out, she has always traveled, often going six times or more from Los Angeles to New York. "Once I get to Nashville, things slow down for me," she said. "I appreciate Nashville very much. Nashville is a nice-sized city, but not overwhelming, not too fast."

And she loves relaxing and being something she hasn't been in a long time--a housewife. "When I'm in Nashville, I can put the focus on my family."

Cole, who's been married twice before (this is Dupree's second marriage), said she's at a nice plateau in life and enjoying not getting stressed like before.

"There's a plateau that you reach where you say, `What's going to get done is going to get done and what's not is not going to get done. In the meantime, have a good time.' At the end of the day the thing I would not want to say is that I wish I'd worked more or longer. I don't say that I wish I'd worked more. I want to say I wish I'd spent more time with my husband and my family. I want to say I did what I could and then the rest can wait."