Natalie Cole

• Born: February 6, 1950
• Birthplace: Los Angeles, California
• Died: December 31, 2015
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

Singer, songwriter, and actor

After struggling to find her personal and professional identity, Cole found major success in honoring the contributions of her father, Nat King Cole, to the music industry. Her 1991 album, Unforgettable…with Love, featured songs her father had originally recorded. Its release enabled Cole to recognize her heritage through her own voice.

Early Life

Natalie Maria Cole was born on February 6, 1950, in Los Angeles, California. She was the eldest birth daughter of Nat King Cole and Maria Cole; her older sister, Carole, was adopted prior to Cole’s birth. The family also included Cole’s adopted brother Nathaniel Kelly and twin sisters Timolin and Casey.

Cole grew up surrounded by music, celebrity, and privilege. Her father was a famous singer, and her mother sang with the Duke Ellington Orchestra before marrying and raising a family. Cole spent her early years living in the wealthy Hancock Park area of Los Angeles.

Cole’s parents often toured, leaving the children to be cared for by family members, nannies, and maids. Her parents came from different backgrounds, which influenced their parenting styles. Cole’s mother raised the children more directly and formally than her father, and Cole’s cultured upbringing and educational expectations were influenced by maternal relatives.

Cole began attending Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts in 1964. A year later, her father died of lung cancer while she was away at school. His illness, and the fact that he was dying, had been kept from Cole. The secrecy left her feeling disconnected, and the inability to say good-bye haunted her throughout much of her life. Cole returned to the Los Angeles area and graduated from the Buckley School. During this time, she was introduced to drugs.

Although Cole enjoyed singing as a child, she initially was not interested in a career in music. She attended the University of Massachusetts and University of Southern California and graduated from the former in 1972 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

Life’s Work

Cole started singing with a band called Black Magic while a senior at Massachusetts. She then toured with other musicians throughout the United States and the Caribbean, where she performed primarily rock, rhythm-and-blues, and pop songs. She avoided jazz—her father’s genre—initially as she wanted to establish herself in her own right.

Cole secured her first record deal with Capitol Records in 1974 and produced her first album, Inseparable (1975). She went on to record many successful albums with labels including Epic, Modern, EMI/Manhattan, Elektra, and Verve. However, while releasing a series of gold and platinum albums in the late 1970s, Cole struggled with drug addiction. She experimented with LSD in 1972 then became addicted to heroin and cocaine and made an unsuccessful attempt at rehabilitation before achieving sobriety in the mid-1980s. While Cole was receiving treatment for her drug addiction, her mother assumed control of her finances and custody of her son. Cole also underwent surgery in 1982 to remove nodules on her vocal cords.

After a string of poor-selling recordings in the 1980s, Cole reached number one of the Billboard 200 for the first time with Unforgettable…with Love (1991), a celebration of her father’s classic songs. The album, featuring Cole’s arrangements of Nat King Cole’s jazz standards such as “Mona Lisa” and “Route 66,” sold more than seven million copies in the United States. Particularly noteworthy was her rendition of “Unforgettable,” which incorporated her father’s recording of the song to create a duet. Cole won Grammy Awards for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance and Record of the Year for the song, in addition to other awards for the album.

Cole also acted in television shows and films such as Lily in Winter (1994), Touched by an Angel (1995), and Grey’s Anatomy (2006). She appeared in several specials and in a made-for-television movie about her life titled Livin’ for Love: The Natalie Cole Story (2000). Cole also continued to record jazz albums throughout the 1990s and 2000s. However, she suffered a series of health problems in the late 2000s: She contracted hepatitis C in 2008 and had a kidney transplant in 2009.

Cole’s singing achievements have been recognized with several Grammy Awards. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1979) and two American Music Awards (1992). Cole also won Image Awards from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for her singing and acting and was a Society of Singers ELLA Award honoree in 2010. She released her final album, Natalie Cole en Español, in 2013, earning three Latin Grammy Award nominations for the record. While she continued to tour into 2015, she was forced to eventually cancel remaining appearances due to recurring illnesses. Her family announced that she had passed away in a hospital in Los Angeles on December 31, 2015, at the age of sixty-five. While the cause of death was not initially released, shortly after, it was announced that she had died due to congestive heart failure brought on by complications of a rare lung disease.

Cole was married and divorced three times. She was married to the Reverend Marvin Yancy, Jr., André Fischer, and the Reverend Kenneth Dupree. She had one son, Robert Adam Yancy, from her first marriage; he died suddenly at the age of thirty-nine in 2017.

Significance

Cole was an award-winning singer, songwriter, and actor who struggled to define her own identity despite growing up as a privileged child of celebrity. Cole’s experiences throughout her life and her tenacity allowed her to establish herself as a performer with longevity in the entertainment business.

Bibliography

Cole, Natalie. “The Unforgettable Natalie Cole.” Interview by Holly G. Miller. The Saturday Evening Post, 2009, p. 48. Cole discusses the effects of hepatitis C and kidney dialysis, her love of performing, faith, and her father.

Cole, Natalie, with Digby Diehl. Angel on My Shoulder: An Autobiography. Warner Books, 2000. Cole shares candid and personal recollections from her life and career.

Edwards, Audrey. “Pride and Joy.” Essence, 2003, p. 180. In an extended profile, Cole and Nona Gaye (daughter of Marvin Gaye) speak about their famous fathers, the impacts of their deaths, relationships with men, and their experiences in the entertainment industry.

King, Jason. "Natalie Cole: Underappreciated but Never Forgotten." NPR, 1 Jan. 2016, www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2016/01/01/461701599/natalie-cole-underappreciated-but-never-forgotten. Accessed 22 Dec. 2017.

Pareles, Jon. "Natalie Cole, 'Unforgettable' Voice and Million-Selling Hitmaker, Dies at 65." The New York Times, 1 Jan. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/01/02/arts/music/natalie-cole-grammy-award-winning-singer-dies-at-65.html. Accessed 22 Dec. 2017.