Jazz vocalist Allan Harris has a very poetic way of describing why he thinks the music of vocalist Nat King Cole still resonates with people. “He interprets songs the way an average person dreams,” Harris says from his home in Manhattan.

Harris, who comes to the Sunset Center this Saturday to perform his Nat King Cole tribute show, Long Live the King, explains that Cole was a master at singing to the point without affectation. He also says Cole, who made songs like “Unforgettable” standards, was important for social reasons beyond to his many contributions to the Great American Songbook. “Nat was really one of the first men of color who crossed over [to commercial success] completely,” Harris says.

Harris developed his Cole tribute show for a two-night run at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center. The performances were recorded and then also released as the 13-song live CD Long Live the King in 2007.

While developing the show, Harris says he encountered one of his greatest problems after asking his fans to e-mail their requests of their favorite Cole songs for him to perform. “I got inundated with so many different songs,” he says. “Everyone had an instance in their life that was tied to a Nat King Cole song.”

Harris made sure to include Cole classics like “It’s Only a Paper Moon” and “Unforgettable” in his set list, but the singer also decided to include less known compositions, like “A Blossom Fell.”

Harris says one of Cole’s most famous numbers is also one of the most difficult to perform. “‘Nature Boy’ is real challenging,” he says. “Of all the songs I do, I change it every night. It’s such an open song. We really go for it. I ad-lib. I scat. I go out there.”

Though the vocalist has also done tributes to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Harris, whom Tony Bennett has called “my favorite singer,” is also a songwriter known for ambitious projects including 2006’s Cross That River. The 10-song CD is a Western music album with undercurrents of jazz, bluegrass and rock.

“It’s a story of the American West told through a person of color,” he says.

Specifically, Cross That River is about a runaway slave from the South named “Blue.” The fictional character escapes slavery and plunges into the wide-open plains of Texas, where he works on cattle drives during the 1800s.

This summer, Harris is hoping to put out a collection of jazz standards about love told from a male perspective. For the CD, the singer is very excited to be working with the five-time Grammy Award winning jazz producer Don Sickler.

“He’s a pure jazz cat,” Harris says. “He’s ferocious.”

ALLAN HARRIS performs his Nat King Cole tribute Long Live the King 8pm Saturday, March 28, at the Sunset Center, San Carlos at Ninth St., Carmel. $35-$45.