Born in 1919 in Montgomery, Alabama, he spent his formative years in Chicago, where he acquired piano skills at a young age. Cole emerged as one of the era’s most accomplished and cherished vocalists, recognized for his velvety voice and refined phrasing. Additionally, he gained popularity as a television personality, hosting his own variety show, “The Nat King Cole Show,” during the 1950s. Unfortunately, Cole passed away in 1965 at the age of 45 due to lung cancer. His impact as a musician and entertainer endures, continuing to influence and inspire people today.
The Life of Nat King Cole
He was born in Montgomery, Alabama, USA. He moved to Chicago with his family when he was still a child. His father became a pastor and his mother became a church organist. Cole started learning to play the organ at this time. Until the age of 12, his mother taught him. In addition to jazz and gospel, he furthered his knowledge of classical western music by learning songs by composers ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach to Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Cole listened to artists such as Louis Armstrong, Earl “Fatha” Hines and Jimmie Noone in various jazz clubs. He participated in music programs during his studies. In the 1930s, as a child, he began his career as a musician and adopted the name “Nat Cole”. Working with his orchestra in jazz clubs, Cole made his first music recording with his brother in 1936. He worked as a pianist in Eubie Blake’s revue and toured the country with this show.
In Long Beach, he worked in local bars with the “King Cole Swingers” orchestra he formed with three other musicians. He later married dancer Nadine Robinson, moved to Los Angeles and formed the Nat King Cole Trio. Cole was the pianist in this trio, while Oscar Moore was the guitarist and Wesley Prince was the bassist. The group also made radio recordings until the late 1930s.
Cole first gained popularity with “Sweet Lorraine” in 1940. In addition to his work as a pianist, he was shy about it, although he did lend his voice to some songs. Although he prided himself on his diction, he never thought he was a good singer; he believed that his soft delivery did not match the style of jazz vocalists of the time.
Childhood and Chicago
Born Nathaniel Adams Coles, he was born in Montgomery, Alabama. His birthday corresponds to Saint Patrick’s Day in 1919 in the world almanac. In some sources, his birth year is shown in 1917. Although his father’s main profession was butchering, he also worked as an assistant pastor in the church. Later his father became a priest in the same church. His mother Perlina also played the church organ in the same church. Nat received lessons from his mother on how to play the church organ until the age of 12. He then continued his musical education with more formal lessons. He gave his first live performance at the age of four. His education was not only in the jazz genre, but he also learned classical music, learning European classical music as well as jazz. For example, his performance of Johann Sebastian Bach to Sergei Rachmaninoff is the best proof of this.
His family lived in Bronzeville, close to Chicago. Nat spent a lot of time around the cafes and bars in the neighborhood. During this time, he listened to the songs of famous names of the music world such as Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines and Jimmie Noone. In the same years, he also took part in a program at DuSable High School, a project of Walter Dyett.
Playing the works of Earl Hines, he started his professional career in the mid-1930s when he was still very young under the name Nat Cole. His older brother Eddie Coles later joined Nat’s band as Eddie’s in 1936 as a bass player. That year they made their first recordings under the same name. Then they started to perform regularly at musical venues in the neighborhood. Later, during another jazz performance, the King pseudonym was used for him.
He also worked as a pianist at the Broadway Theater. He played in Eubie Blake’s revue. He then decided to stay in Long Beach, California.
Los Angeles and King Cole trio
Nat Cole and three musicians first formed a band called the King Cole Swingers. When the band was first formed, they played in bars with live music in Long Beach and earned 90 dollars a week. This was a lot of money for a band in the 1930s.
Nat married Nadine Robinson, the dancer from his previous band Shuffle Along. After their marriage they moved to Los Angeles, where Cole formed the Nat King Cole trio. The trio featured Nat on piano, Oscar Moore on guitar and Wesley Price on bass. The group played in Los Angeles until the late 1930s and recorded many demos. Nat’s role in the group was to play the piano and lead the ensemble. Nat didn’t start his singing career until an important customer in a bar asked him to sing Sweet Lorraine. It went like this. The client was very rich and a regular at the nightclub. Then somehow he asked Nat to sing Sweet Lorraine. Nat refused, saying, “I’m a pianist, I play the piano, I don’t sing. Immediately afterwards, the customer again charged Nat, saying, “Or don’t you know?”. But Nat again refused this offer for the second time saying of course I know but I won’t do it. The customer then said that he would pass this on to the boss and walked away and went to the boss. After this the boss came to Nat and told him that he was the most important customer here and that he had to sing the song, otherwise Nat and his band would be fired. Nat’s singing career then began. 1928’s Sweet Lorraine became Nat’s first hit in 1940.
When Wesley Prince left the group during World War II, Nat replaced him with Johnny Miller. Then the trio signed with Capitol Records in 1943. Nat continued to work with this label throughout his career. After Nat’s albums were successful both musically and financially, Capitol Records built a large building in Los Angeles-Hollywood and Vine. The building, which was completed in 1956, is also called the house that Nat built.
Cole was considered a jazz pianist. He always played the piano in his concerts. His first concert was called Jazz at Philharmonic (on Mercury Records it was called Shorty Nadine). The combination of piano, bass and guitar in the band he formed was a revolution for those years. From that day on, jazz bands in this genre became famous. This style was developed by famous musicians of the time and has survived to the present day. These musicians included pianists such as Art Tatum, Erroll Garner, Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal, Tommy Flanagan, as well as blues pianists Charles Brown and Ray Charles. Cole also played piano and performed with musicians such as Lester Young, Red Callender, and Lionel Hampton.
Early years of singing career
The Page Cavanaugh Trio was formed at the same time as Cole’s trio, after the war. Even today, it is often argued that Cole’s trio is better, although it is still debated which is better.
Cole’s first serious singing experience came in 1943 with the recording of one of his own songs, “Straighten Up and Fly Right”.
Johnny Mercer of Capitol Records invited Cole to the label to record this song. Once recorded and released, this production reached a wide audience. It sold more than 500,000 copies. Despite this song, Nat was never considered a rock artist. Nevertheless, this song is considered one of the first rock and roll productions. Bo Diddley also counted Cole among his influences.
Towards the end of 1940, Cole recorded songs with more pop motifs in order to reach more listeners. He did this by working with an orchestra of stringed instruments. His adoption as a pop icon was reinforced with a hit song like The Christmas Song. Cole recorded this song four times under different circumstances. These were recorded in 1946, 1953, 1961 and 1961. The last recording was included in The Nat King Cole Story album and was recorded in stereo. Even today, this version of the song is often played in various places.
When his shift from jazz to pop became a topic of discussion among fans and music critics, Cole recorded an album titled After the Midnight in late 1956 to show that he had returned to his roots and had never broken away from jazz.
Television life
On November 5, 1956, his eponymous television program, The Nat King Cole Show!!!, began airing on the American television channel NBC. Although the broadcasters announced Cole’s program as the first program hosted by an African American in the United States, it became clear to everyone that Cole was a great jazz pianist and singer.
Although the program was broadcast for fifteen minutes on Mondays at the beginning of its broadcast, it was increased to thirty minutes in July 1957 and continued to be broadcast. Frankie Lane, Cole’s rival in the music market, also participated in the program. The participation of this white pianist, who participated in the program despite all the obstacles of the television channel managers, is very important. Because he was the first white pianist to overcome the color barrier, and the first white pianist to appear as a guest on the program. The popularity of the program increased even more with the participation of famous artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Belafonte, Mel Tormé, Peggy Lee, and Eartha Kitt. Although the program then needed an international sponsor, it never found one. Only a company called Rheingold Beer became a sponsor. But even this was insufficient in terms of financial resources for the program.
Cancellation of the program and racism
The last episode of the program aired on December 17, 1957. Cole was able to survive for a year in the television world with only his own work without any support. The decline in the program’s popularity and the lack of sponsors put Cole and the program’s broadcaster, NBC, at an economic loss. Another reason for the program’s decline in popularity was that another music channel, ABC, was attracting attention with some different types of television shows. As a result, Cole’s production succumbed to the competition between the two networks. In addition, the programs of musicians such as Frank Sinatra (1957), Judy Garland (1963) and Julie Andrews (1972) ended in the same way. In short, musical programs in those years were risky projects for producers.
1950s and after
In the 1950s, Nat Cole had one hit after another. Some of them are “Smile”, “Pretend”, “A Blossom Fell”, “If I May”. His songs are the product of the collaboration of the best arrangers and producers of the day. Among these people are Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins, Ralph Carmichael and others. Riddle arranged Nat King Cole Sings For Two In Love (1953), the first 10-inch long album by Cole, which was released in 1950, as well as several other Cole albums. Jenkins also arranged the album Love Is the Thing, which reached No. 1 on the charts, in April 1957.
Death and later achievements
Cole died of lung cancer on February 15, 1965, at the peak of his career. In a radio interview the day before his death, he said, “I’ve never felt better. I think I’m completely cancer-free. In the 1997 book Chicken Soup for the Soul, Cole’s life story, it is said that his wife Maria missed the moment of Cole’s death due to a car problem, but this is an urban legend.
His last album, L-O-V-E, was completed in the first days of December 1964, a few days before he was hospitalized for treatment of lung cancer. The album was also released a few days before his death. The album peaked at number four on the Billboard chart (1965). His 1957 single “When I Fall In Love” reached the top of the UK charts in 1987.
In 1983, Capitol Records announced that Cole had recorded other unreleased songs, including a Japanese song and “Tu Eres Tan Amable” in Spanish. Capitol records released them the following year on an album called Unreleased.
Cole received a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1990. He was also inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame and the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.
In 1991, an American music company called Mosaic Records released The Complete Capitol Recordings of the Nat King Cole Trio, a set of all Nat King Cole and his Trio’s tracks released on Capitol Records. This set consisted of 18 disks and included 349 songs.
Nat’s youngest brother Freddy Cole and Nat’s daughter Natalie Cole are also singers. In 1991 Natalie Cole put Unforgettable, a 1961 song by her father, on her own album. But she combined her voice and her father’s voice in the song. Thus she commemorated her father’s music again. This album, named after the song, won seven Grammy awards in 1992.
Marriages, children and other personal information
There has been much confusion about Cole’s exact date of birth. This is because he used four different birth dates on some official documents (1915, 1916, 1917, and 1919). However, in the 1920 United States census, Nathaniel was counted with his parents and siblings and was recorded as nine months old. This official record clearly shows that he was born in 1919. In the 1930 census in Chicago, he was recorded as eleven years old. The Nat King Cole Society’s website also lists Cole’s birth year as 1919.
Cole’s first marriage to Nadine Robinson ended in 1948. On March 28, 1948, just six days after the divorce was finalized, Nat King Cole married singer Maria Hawkins Ellington. Although Ellington was not related to jazzman Duke Ellington, Maria Ellington sang in Duke Ellington’s band. The two were married in a Harlem Abyssinian church by politician Adam Clayton Powell Jr. They had five children. Their first daughter Natalie was born in 1950. Before that, the couple adopted Carol, born in 1944, the daughter of Maria’s sister. Their son Nat Kelly Cole was born in 1959 and died in 1995 at the age of thirty-six. Their twin daughters Casey and Timolin were also born in 1961.
Nat Cole also experienced many problems in his marriage. Even after he was diagnosed with lung cancer, he was estranged from his wife Maria because of actress Gunilla Hutton. Hutton is famous for her role in Nurse Goodbody of Hee Haw. However, he lived with his wife throughout his illness and remained together until his death. His wife Maria emphasized in an interview that Cole never dwelled on his problems and always prioritized his personality and musical quality.
Cole was an avid smoker of KOOL brand menthol cigarettes, consuming up to three packs a day. He believed that smoking made his voice more hoarse. Before the recordings, he smoked a few cigarettes immediately for this purpose. On February 15, 1965, he died of lung cancer at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, California. His body was interred at St. James Episcomal Church in Los Angeles. Cole is buried in the Freedom Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale-Los Angeles.
Political views
Cole supported John F. Kennedy in the presidential election. In 1961, he was among the artists who appeared in shows organized by Frank Sinatra in support of this presidential candidate. He exchanged views on some social issues with President Kennedy and later with President Johnson.
