»Brett Smiley dies at 60
Brett Smiley, who appeared on Broadway in the original musical Oliver! in 1965 and went on to become a glam rocker and achieve cult fame, has died. He was 60. Richard Pyle, Smiley’s brother-in-law, said on Monday that the Indianaborn singer died on Friday at his home in New York City.
Stevie Wonder. will always remember her laughter, her humour, her silliness, that voice and more importantly her friendship. There were many moments she was down and she picked me up.”
A WISE SOUL
Foster collaborated with Cole when she intertwined her voice with that of her father to make his Unforgettable, a multi-Grammy-winning hit through technological wizardry in 1991. “She was the most un-star like superstar you could ever know,” he said. “She always had a sympathetic ear and words of wisdom, which she learnt from her own eventful life.”
Cole was frank about the fierce drug addiction that gripped her for several years until she went to rehab and overcame it in the 1980s. She was later Reverend Jesse Jackson
and Lionel Richie. Pallbearers carry Natalie
Cole’s coffin. From right, Cole’s siblings
Timolin and Casey Cole. diagnosed with hepatitis C, which she attributed to her addiction, and had a kidney transplant in 2009.
Yancy, whose late father Marvin was the first of Cole’s three husbands, is a drummer who played in his mother’s touring band. “What a woman,” he said. “She taught me how to love. She had my back every time when I needed it. The greatest gift she ever gave me was Jesus. I cannot wait until that day that I see you again.”
Cole Hooker said her older sister wanted her epitaph to be: “The daughter of a king, the mother of a prince and a friend to all.”
Cole was later interred privately at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, near her father, her mother Maria, and adopted siblings Carole and Nat Kelly Cole.
—AP