- Album list
- Singer Intro
Natalie Maria Cole (February 6, 1950 – December 31, 2015) was an American singer, voice actress, songwriter, and actress. The daughter of Nat King Cole, she rose to musical success in the mid-1970s as an R&B artist with the hits 'This Will Be', 'Inseparable' (1975), and 'Our Love' (1977). After a period of failing sales and performances due to a heavy drug addiction, Cole re-emerged as a pop artist with the 1987 album Everlasting and her cover of Bruce Springsteen's 'Pink Cadillac'. In the 1990s, she re-recorded standards by her father, resulting in her biggest success, Unforgettable... with Love, which sold over seven million copies and also won Cole seven Grammy Awards. She sold over 30 million records worldwide. She is best known for the role of herself in Yakety Yak, Take it Back, and Trash Talk, and the singing voice of Sawyer Cat in the Cats Don't Dance franchise. On December 31, 2015, Cole died at the age of 65 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, due to congestive heart failure.
Early life
Natalie Cole was born at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles, the daughter of crooner Nat King Cole and former Duke Ellington Orchestra singer Maria Hawkins Ellington, and raised in the affluent Hancock Park district of Los Angeles. Regarding her childhood, Cole referred to her family as 'the black Kennedys' and was exposed to many great singers of jazz, soul and blues. At the age of 6, Natalie sang on her father's Christmas album and later began performing at age 11.
Cole grew up with an older adopted sister, Carole 'Cookie' (1944–2009) (her mother Maria's younger sister's daughter), adopted brother Nat 'Kelly' Cole (1959–95), and younger twin sisters Timolin and Casey (born 1961).
Her paternal uncle Freddy Cole is a singer and pianist with numerous albums and awards. Cole enrolled in Northfield School for Girls, an elite New England preparatory school (since 1971 known as Northfield Mount Hermon School) before her father died of lung cancer in February 1965. Soon afterwards she began having a difficult relationship with her mother. She enrolled in the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She transferred briefly to University of Southern California where she pledged the Upsilon chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She later transferred back to the University of Massachusetts, where she majored in Child Psychology and minored in German, graduating in 1972.
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