‘Unforgettable’ singer Natalie Cole dies at 65
LOS ANGELES—She began as a 1970s soul singer hyped as the next Aretha Franklin and peaked in the 1990s as an oldfashioned stylist and time-defying duet partner to her late father, Nat “King” Cole.
Natalie Cole, who died on Thursday in Los Angeles at age 65, was a Grammy-winning superstar honored and haunted by comparisons to others.
“Natalie fought a fierce, courageous battle, dying how she lived ... with dignity, strength and honor. Our beloved Mother and sister will be greatly missed and remain UNFORGETTABLE in our hearts forever,” read a statement from her son, Robert Yancy, and sisters Timolin and Casey Cole.
Her family said Cole died of complications from ongoing health issues.
She had battled drug problems and hepatitis that forced her to undergo a kidney transplant in May 2009. Cole’s older sister, Carol “Cookie” Cole, died the day she received the transplant. Their brother, Nat Kelly Cole, died in 1995.
“I had to hold back the tears,” said Franklin, who had feuded with Cole early in Cole’s career. “She fought for so long. She was one of the greatest singers of our time. She represented the Cole legend of excellence and class quite well.”
Inspired by Dad
A mezzo-soprano with striking range and power, Cole was destined to be a singer, the only question being what kind.
She was inspired by her dad at an early age and auditioned to sing with him when she was just 11 years old. She was 15 when he died of lung cancer, in 1965, and would reunite with him decades later in a way only possible through modern technology.
All along, she was moved by and sometimes torn between past and present sounds.
As a young woman, she had listened to Franklin and Janis Joplin and for years was reluctant to perform her father’s material. She sang on stage with Frank Sinatra, but also covered Bruce Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac.”
“I was determined to create my own identity,” she wrote in her 2010 memoir “Love Brought Me Back.”
The public loved her either way.
She made her recording debut in 1975 with “Inseparable,” and the music industry welcomed her with two Grammy Awards—one for best new artist and one for best female R&B vocal performance for her buoyant hit “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love).”
Her quick success and the similarities to Franklin did not please the “Queen of Soul,” who at the time called Cole “just a beginner.”
“The first time I saw Aretha was at an industry banquet,” Cole said later. “She gave me an icy stare and turned her back on me. It took me weeks to recover.”
Heroin, alcohol
Cole’s career faded in the early 1980s and she battled heroin, crack cocaine and alcohol addiction for many years. She spent six months in rehab in 1983.
Her recovery began later in the decade and reached multiplatinum heights with her 1991 album, “Unforgettable ... With Love.”
Cole paid tribute to her father with reworked versions of some of his best-known songs, including “Too Young” and “Mona Lisa.”
Her voice was overlaid with her dad’s in the title cut, offering a delicate duet a quartercentury after his death.
Although criticized by some as morbid, the album sold some 14 million copies and won six Grammys, including album of the year as well record and song of the year for the title track duet.
While making the album, Cole told The Associated Press in 1991, she had to “throw out every R&B lick that I had ever learned and every pop trick I had ever learned. With him, the music was in the background and the voice was in the front.”
“I didn’t shed really any real tears until the album was over,” Cole said. “Then I cried a whole lot. When we started the project it was a way of reconnecting with my dad. Then when we did the last song, I had to say goodbye again.”
She was nominated for an Emmy award in 1992 for a televised performance of her father’s songs.
Another father-daughter duet, “When I Fall in Love,” won a 1996 Grammy for best pop collaboration with vocals, and a follow-up album, “Still Unforgettable,” won for best traditional pop vocal album of 2008.
She also worked as an actress, with appearances on TV’s “Touched by an Angel” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”
But she was happiest performing live.
“I still love recording and still love the stage,” she said in 2008, “but like my dad, I have the most fun when I am in front of that glorious orchestra or that kick-butt big band.”
Cole was born in 1950 to Nat “King” Cole and his wife, Maria Ellington Cole, a onetime vocalist with Duke Ellington.
Her father’s graceful easygoing style was admired by Sinatra, Ray Charles and many others and, in 1956, he became the first black entertainer to host a national TV variety show.
Cole grew up in Los Angeles’ posh Hancock Park neighborhood, where her parents had settled in 1948, despite animosity from some white residents about having the black singer as a neighbor.
When told by residents they didn’t want “undesirable people” in the area, the singer said, “Neither do I, and if I see (any), I’ll be the first to complain.”
Cole herself married three times, her husbands including Marvin Yancy and “Unforgettable” coproducer Andre Fischer. Robert Yancy was her only child.
Superstar status
Cole’s career reached the superstar level in 1991 when she recorded “Unforgettable ... With Love.”
The album contained songs associated with her father, the silky-voiced baritone who was one of the most popular performers of the 1940s and ’50s but died before his daughter began her solo career.
Using technology that was cutting edge at the time, studio engineers merged her voice with her father’s in the song “Unforgettable,” which had been a hit for Nat “King” Cole in 1951.
The result was a moving, sentimental No. 1 hit 40 years later, that actually sounded as if the two were singing a duet.
The success of “Unforget- table” capped her comeback after a dark period of heroin, crack and alcohol abuse.
When Cole announced in 2008 that she had been diagnosed with hepatitis C, a liver disease spread through contact with infected blood, she blamed her past intravenous drug use.
She received chemotherapy to treat the hepatitis and “within four months, I had kidney failure,” she told CNN’s Larry King in 2009. She needed dialysis three times a week until she received a donor kidney on May 18, 2009.
Cole toured through much of her illness, often receiving dialysis at hospitals around the globe.
“You can go through turbulent times and still have victory in your life,” she said.
In “Angel on My Shoulder,” her memoir, Cole said she turned to drugs because of unresolved issues in her life, including being molested as a child and her father’s death when she was 15.
Tributes quickly poured in for Cole, with singer Tony Bennett saying on Instagram he was “deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Natalie Cole, as I have cherished the long friendship I had with her, her father Nat, and the family over the years.”
Bennett added: “Natalie was an exceptional jazz singer and it was an honor to have recorded and performed with her on several occasions.”
“We’ve lost a wonderful, highly cherished artist and our heartfelt condolences go out to Natalie’s family, friends, her many collaborators, as well as to all who have been entertained by her exceptional talent,” said Neil Portnow, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.