Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as
Nat King Cole, was an
American musician who first came to prominence as a leading
jazz pianist. He owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft
baritone voice, which he used to perform in
big band and jazz genres. He was one of the first black Americans to host a television
variety show, and has maintained worldwide popularity since his death.
[edit] Childhood and Chicago
Nathaniel Adams Coles was born in
Montgomery,
Alabama, on
Saint Patrick's Day in 1919
[1].At the age of 4,
[2] his family moved to
Chicago,
Illinois. There his father, Edward Coles, became a
Baptist minister. Cole learned to play the
organ from his mother, Perlina Coles, the church organist. His first performance, at age four, was of "
Yes! We Have No Bananas". He began formal lessons at the age of 12, eventually learning not only
jazz and
gospel music but also European
classical music, performing, as he said, "from
Johann Sebastian Bach to
Sergei Rachmaninoff".
Cole had three brothers: Eddie,
Ike, and
Freddy. Cole's half-sister, Joyce Cole, married Robert Doak, of Robert Doak & Associates, Inc., art suppliers.
The family lived in the
Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. Cole would sneak out of the house and hang around outside the clubs, listening to artists such as
Louis Armstrong,
Earl Hines, and
Jimmie Noone. He participated in
Walter Dyett's renowned music program at
DuSable High School.
Inspired by the performances of
Earl Hines, Cole began his performing career in the mid 1930s while still a teenager, adopting the name "Nat Cole". His older brother,
Eddie Cole, a
bass player, soon joined Cole's band, and they made their first recording in 1936 under Eddie's name. They were also regular performers at clubs. In fact, Cole acquired his nickname "King" performing at one jazz club, a nickname presumably reinforced by the otherwise unrelated nursery rhyme about
Old King Cole. He was also a
pianist in a national tour of
Broadway theatre legend
Eubie Blake's revue, "Shuffle Along". When it suddenly failed in
Long Beach, California, Cole decided to remain there. He would later return to Chicago in triumph to play such venues as the famed
Edgewater Beach Hotel.
[edit] Los Angeles and the King Cole Trio
Cole and two other musicians formed the "King Cole Swingers" in Long Beach and played in a number of local bars before getting a gig on the
Long Beach Pike for
US$90 ($1,427 today) per week.
In January 1937, Cole married dancer Nadine Robinson, who was also in the musical
Shuffle Along, and moved to
Los Angeles. The trio consisted of Cole on piano,
Oscar Moore on guitar, and
Wesley Prince on double bass. The trio played in Failsworth throughout the late 1930s and recorded many radio transcriptions. Cole's role was that of piano player and leader of the combo.
Legend had it that Cole's singing career did not start until a drunken barroom patron demanded that he sing "Sweet Lorraine". In fact, Cole has gone on record saying that the fabricated story "sounded good, so I just let it ride." Cole frequently sang in between instrumental numbers. Noticing that people started to request more vocal numbers, he obliged. Yet the story of the insistent customer is not without some truth. There was a customer who requested a certain song one night, but it was a song that Cole did not know, so instead he sang "Sweet Lorraine". The trio was tipped 15 cents for the performance, a nickel apiece (
Nat King Cole: An Intimate Biography, Maria Cole with Louie Robinson, 1971).
During
World War II, Wesley Prince left the group and Cole replaced him with Johnny Miller. Miller would later be replaced by
Charlie Harris in the 1950s. The King Cole Trio signed with the fledgling
Capitol Records in 1943. Revenues from Cole's record sales fueled much of Capitol Records' success during this period. The revenue is believed to have played a significant role in financing the distinctive Capitol Records building near
Hollywood and Vine in
Los Angeles. Completed in 1956, it was the world's first circular office building and became known as "The House that Nat Built."
Cole was considered a leading jazz pianist, appearing in the first
Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts (credited on the
Mercury Record labels as "Shorty Nadine," apparently derived from the name of his wife at the time). His revolutionary lineup of piano, guitar, and bass in the time of the big bands became a popular setup for a jazz trio. It was emulated by many musicians, among them
Art Tatum,
Oscar Peterson,
Ahmad Jamal, and blues pianists
Charles Brown and
Ray Charles. He also performed as a pianist on sessions with
Lester Young,
Red Callender, and
Lionel Hampton. The
Page Cavanaugh Trio, with the same setup as Cole, came out of the chute about the same time, at the end of the war. It's still a tossup as to who was first, although it is generally agreed that the credit goes to Cole.
[edit] Early singing career
"...I started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that's just the way it came out."
[3]--
VOA interview,
[4]
Cole's first mainstream vocal hit was his 1943 recording of one of his compositions, "
Straighten Up and Fly Right", based on a black
folk tale that his father had used as a theme for a sermon.
Johnny Mercer invited him to record it for his fledgling
Capitol Records label. It sold over 500,000 copies, proving that folk-based material could appeal to a wide audience. Although Cole would never be considered a rocker, the song can be seen as anticipating the
first rock and roll records. Indeed,
Bo Diddley, who performed similar transformations of folk material, counted Cole as an influence.
Beginning in the late 1940s, Cole began recording and performing pop-oriented material for mainstream audiences, in which he was often accompanied by a
string orchestra. His stature as a popular icon was cemented during this period by hits such as "
The Christmas Song" (Cole recorded that tune four times: on June 14, 1946, as a pure Trio recording, on August 19, 1946, with an added string section, on August 24, 1953, and in 1961 for the double album
The Nat King Cole Story; this final version, recorded in stereo, is the one most often heard today), "
Nature Boy" (1948), "
Mona Lisa" (1950), "Too Young" (the #1 song in 1951),
[5] and his signature tune "
Unforgettable" (1951). While this shift to pop music led some jazz critics and fans to accuse Cole of
selling out, he never totally abandoned his jazz roots; as late as 1956, for instance, he recorded an all-jazz album
After Midnight. Cole had one of his last big hits in 1963, two years before his death, with the classic "Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer", which reached #6 on the Pop chart.
[edit] Making television history
On November 5, 1956,
The Nat King Cole Show debuted on
NBC-TV. The Cole program was the first of its kind hosted by an African-American, which created controversy at the time.
[6]
Beginning as a 15-minute pops show on Monday night, the program was expanded to a half hour in July 1957. Despite the efforts of NBC, as well as many of Cole's industry colleagues—many of whom, such as
Ella Fitzgerald,
Harry Belafonte,
Frankie Laine,
Mel Tormé,
Peggy Lee, and
Eartha Kitt, worked for industry scale (or even for no pay)
[6] in order to help the show save money—
The Nat King Cole Show was ultimately done in by lack of a national sponsorship.
[6] Companies such as
Rheingold Beer assumed regional sponsorship of the show, but a national sponsor never appeared.
[6]
The last episode of "The Nat King Cole Show" aired December 17, 1957. Cole had survived for over a year, and it was he, not NBC, who ultimately decided to pull the plug on the show.
[7] NBC, as well as Cole himself, had been operating at an extreme financial loss.
[citation needed] Commenting on the lack of sponsorship his show received, Cole quipped shortly after its demise, "Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark."
[8][9]
In January 1964, Cole made one of his final television appearances on
The Jack Benny Program. Cole was introduced as “the best friend a song ever had," and sang “
When I Fall in Love." It was one of Cole's last performances.
[edit] Racism
Cole fought
racism all his life and rarely performed in
segregated venues. In 1956, he was assaulted on stage during a concert in
Birmingham, Alabama, with the
Ted Heath Band (while singing the song "Little Girl"), by three members of the North Alabama
White Citizens Council (a group led by
Education of Little Tree author
Asa "Forrest" Carter, himself not among the attackers), who apparently were attempting to kidnap him. The three male attackers ran down the aisles of the auditorium towards Cole and his band. Although local law enforcement quickly ended the invasion of the stage, the ensuing melée toppled Cole from his piano bench and injured his back. Cole did not finish the concert and never again performed in the
South. A fourth member of the group who had participated in the plot was later arrested in connection with the act. All were later tried and convicted for their roles in the crime.
[10]
In August 1948, Cole purchased a house from Col. Harry Gantz, the former husband of
Lois Weber, in the all-
white Hancock Park neighborhood of
Los Angeles. The
Ku Klux Klan, still active in Los Angeles well into the 1950s, responded by placing a burning cross on his front lawn. Members of the property-owners association told Cole they did not want any undesirables moving in. Cole retorted, "Neither do I. And if I see anybody undesirable coming in here, I'll be the first to complain."
[11]
In 1956, he was contracted to perform in Cuba and wanted to stay at the
Hotel Nacional de Cuba, Havana, but was not allowed to because it operated a
color bar. Cole honored his contract, and the concert at the Tropicana was a huge success. The following year, he returned to Cuba for another concert, singing many songs in Spanish. There is now a tribute to him in the form of a
bust and a
jukebox in the Hotel Nacional.
[12]
[edit] 1950s and beyond
Throughout the 1950s, Cole continued to rack up successive hits, including "
Smile", "
Pretend", "
A Blossom Fell", and "
If I May". His pop hits were collaborations with well-known arrangers and conductors of the day, including
Nelson Riddle,
[3] Gordon Jenkins, and
Ralph Carmichael. Riddle arranged several of Cole's 1950s albums, including his first 10-inch long-play album, his 1953
Nat King Cole Sings For Two In Love. In 1955, his single "
Darling Je Vous Aime Beaucoup" reached #7 on the
Billboard chart. Jenkins arranged
Love Is the Thing, which hit #1 on the album charts in April 1957.
In 1958, Cole went to
Havana, Cuba to record
Cole Español, an album sung entirely in
Spanish. The album was so popular in
Latin America, as well as in the USA, that two others of the same variety followed:
A Mis Amigos (sung in Spanish and
Portuguese) in 1959 and
More Cole Español in 1962.
A Mis Amigos contains the
Venezuelan hit "Ansiedad," whose lyrics Cole had learned while performing in
Caracas in 1958. Cole learned songs in languages other than English by
rote.
After the change in musical tastes during the late 1950s, Cole's ballad singing did not sell well with younger listeners, despite a successful stab at rock n' roll with "Send For Me" (peaked at #6 pop). Along with his contemporaries
Dean Martin,
Frank Sinatra, and
Tony Bennett, Cole found that the pop singles chart had been almost entirely taken over by youth-oriented acts. In 1960, Nat's longtime collaborator Nelson Riddle left
Capitol Records for Frank Sinatra's newly formed
Reprise Records label. Riddle and Cole recorded one final hit album,
Wild Is Love, based on lyrics by
Ray Rasch and Dotty Wayne. Cole later retooled the concept album into an
Off-Broadway show, "I'm With You."
Cole did manage to record some hit singles during the 1960s, including in 1961 "Let There Be Love" with George Shearing, the country-flavored hit "
Ramblin' Rose" in August 1962, "
Dear Lonely Hearts", "
That Sunday, That Summer" and "Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days Of Summer" (his final hit, reaching #6 pop).
Cole performed in many short films, sitcoms, and television shows and played
W. C. Handy in the film
St. Louis Blues (1958). He also appeared in
The Nat King Cole Story,
China Gate, and
The Blue Gardenia (1953).
Cat Ballou (1965), his final film, was released several months after his death.
[edit] Death and posthumous achievements
Cole's vault at Forest Lawn Memorial Park
Cole was a smoker of
Kool menthol cigarettes, believing that smoking up to three packs a day gave his voice its rich sound (Cole would smoke several
cigarettes in rapid succession before a recording). He died from
lung cancer on February 15, 1965, at
St. John's Hospital in
Santa Monica,
California.
Cole's funeral was held at St. James Episcopal Church on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles. His remains were interred inside Freedom Mausoleum at
Forest Lawn Memorial Park in
Glendale. His last album,
L-O-V-E, was recorded in early December 1964—just a few days before he entered the hospital for cancer treatment—and was released just prior to his death. It peaked at #4 on the
Billboard Albums chart in the spring of 1965. A "Best Of" album went gold in 1968. His 1957 recording of "When I Fall In Love" reached #4 in the UK charts in 1987.
In 1983, an archivist for EMI
Electrola Records, EMI (Capitol's parent company) Records' subsidiary in
Germany, discovered some songs Cole had recorded but that had never been released, including one in
Japanese and another in
Spanish ("Tu Eres Tan Amable"). Capitol released them later that year as the LP "Unreleased."
Cole was inducted into both the
Alabama Music Hall of Fame and the
Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. In 1990, he was awarded the
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1997 was inducted into the
Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame. In 2007, he was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.
In 1991,
Mosaic Records released "The Complete
Capitol Recordings of the Nat King Cole Trio," an 18-compact-disc set consisting of 349 songs. (This special compilation also was available as a 27-LP set.)
Cole's youngest brother,
Freddy Cole, and Cole's daughter
Natalie are also singers. In the summer of 1991, Natalie Cole and her father had a hit when Natalie's own newly-recorded voice track was mixed with her father's 1961 rendition of "
Unforgettable" into a new duet version as part of a tribute album to her father's music. The song and album of the same name won seven Grammy awards in 1992.
[edit] Personal life
There has been some confusion on Cole's actual year of birth. Cole himself used four different dates on official documents: 1915, 1916, 1917, and 1919; however, Nathaniel is listed with his parents and older siblings in the 1920 U.S. Federal census for Montgomery, Alabama, Ward 7, with his age given as nine months old. Since this is a contemporary record, it is very likely he was born in 1919. This is also consistent with the 1930 census which finds him at age 11 with his family in Chicago, Illinois, Ward 3. In the 1920 census, the race of all members of the family (Ed, Perlina, Eddie M., Edward D., Evelina and Nathaniel Coles) is recorded as mulatto. Cole's birth year is also listed as 1919 on the
Nat King Cole Society's web site.
Cole's first marriage, to Nadine Robinson, ended in 1948. On March 28, 1948 (Easter Sunday), just six days after his divorce became final, Cole married singer
Maria Hawkins Ellington (although Maria had sung with Duke Ellington's band, she was not related to
Duke Ellington). The Coles were married in
Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church by
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. They had five children:
Natalie (born 1950), who herself would go on to have a successful career as a singer; adopted daughter
Carole (1944–2009, the daughter of Maria's sister), who died of lung cancer at 64; adopted son Nat Kelly Cole (1959–1995), who died of AIDS at 36;
[13] and twin daughters Casey and Timolin (born 1961).
Cole had affairs throughout his marriages. By the time he developed lung cancer, he was estranged from his wife Maria and living with actress
Gunilla Hutton, best known as the second Billie Jo Bradley on
Petticoat Junction (1965–1966) and also notable as a regular cast member (Nurse Goodbody) on "
Hee Haw". But Cole was with Maria during his illness, and she stayed with him until his death. In an interview, Maria expressed no lingering resentment over his affairs. Instead, she emphasized his musical legacy and the class he exhibited in all other aspects of his life.
An official United States postage stamp featuring Cole's likeness was issued in 1994.
[2]
In 2000, Cole was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the major influences on early rock and roll.
[2]
[edit] Politics
Cole sang at the 1956 Republican National Convention in the
Cow Palace,
San Francisco,
California, on August 23, 1956. There, his "singing of 'That's All There Is To That' was greeted with applause."
[14] He was also present at the
Democratic National Convention in 1960 to throw his support behind Senator
John F. Kennedy. Cole was also among the dozens of entertainers recruited by
Frank Sinatra to perform at the Kennedy Inaugural gala in 1961. Cole frequently consulted with President Kennedy (and later President Johnson) on civil rights.
[edit] Notable TV appearances (other than his own show)
- Ed Sullivan: Nat King Cole was on The Ed Sullivan Show six times before his own show ran regularly in 1957. He appeared twice after his show ended, once in 1958
- Nat King Cole appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show by: (Season, Episode and Production Number, Air Date, Episode Title)
- Season 9 (380.9-2 02-Oct-1955)
- Scheduled: Nat King Cole; "Fanny" cast and Josh Logan
- Season 9 (383.9-5 23-Oct-1955)
- Season 9 (404.9-26 18-Mar-1956)
- Season 9 (405.9-27 25-Mar-1956)
- Scheduled: Nat King Cole; Jack Carter and Reese & Davis
- Season 9 (411.9-33 06-May-1956)
- Season 9 (416.9-38 10-Jun-1956)
- Season 11 (510.11-29 13-Apr-1958)
- Season 14 (648.14-16 29-Jan-1961)
- The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom (singing duets with the host, October 1, 1959)
- Dinah Shore: Nat King Cole was also on The Dinah Shore Show – singing "Mr. Cole Won’t Rock & Roll" — in the early-1960s.
- Your Show of Shows ... aka Sid Caesar's Show of Shows – Episode dated September 12, 1953.
- What's My Line? (Mystery Guest, December 6, 1953)
- An Evening With Nat King Cole BBC Special 1963.
- The Jack Benny Program (January 21, 1964)
[edit] Discography
[edit] Filmography
[edit] Features
[edit] Short subjects
- King Cole Trio & Benny Carter Orchestra (1950)
- Nat King Cole and Joe Adams Orchestra (1952)
- Nat King Cole and Russ Morgan and His Orchestra (1953)
- The Nat King Cole Musical Story (1955)
[edit] See also
[edit] References
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