NAT KING COLE, PERHAPS

Sooner or later, anyone who spends extended time in Mexico, or indeed anywhere in the Spanish speaking world, will encounter Nat King Cole’s indelible rendition of Quizas, Quizas, Quizas (Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps). Recorded in 1958, and sung in Spanish with an unmistakable American accent, its appeal has never abated. A bolero written in 1947 by the Cuban composer Osvaldo Farrés, it has since been recorded by countless singers, but it is Nat King Cole’s silky, insinuating version that prevails. 

Here is the song performed by Nat King Cole in a vintage video: Quizas

In March of 1956, Cole arrived in Cuba with his wife, six-year-old daughter Natalie, and his band to play at Havana’s fabled Tropicana nightclub, run by the notorious Mafia gangster Meyer Lansky. Cole was at the pinnacle of his fame, and Afro-Cuban music was starting to make an international impact (he’d already had a hit with “Papa Loves Mambo”).

On his days off, he’d record songs for an album in Spanish at Havana’s Panart studio, and it was there that he first recorded Quizas, Quizas, Quizas. 

He would return twice more to Havana and the Tropicana, recording two more albums in Spanish, including the Mexican birthday song Las Mañanitas and Adelita with a Mexican mariachi troupe.

For all its linguistic peculiarity, his songs in Spanish have turned out to be, in the words of another of his hits, unforgettable.