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 1919 - 1965
 Musician. Born Nathaniel Adams Coles on March 17, 1919, in Birmingham, Alabama, to Reverend Edward James Coles Sr. and Perlina Adams Coles; only five of their 13 children survived until adulthood. When Nat was four, the family moved from Montgomery to Chicago, where his father ministered the True Light Baptist Church and his mother directed the choir, training all of her children in music. Nat naturally took to the piano and could play anything from Bach to Rachmaninoff by the time he was a teenager. He manned the organ regularly in his father's church and, while a student at Phillip's High School, organized a jazz band that played local gigs for $1.50 a night. He also kept the rhythm in a sextet, Eddie Cole's Solid Swingers--organized by his brother Eddie, a bass violinist--which made its recording debut in 1936.
Later that year, Cole joined a revival of the Shuffle Along revue and toured with the company as a pianist until the show closed in Los Angeles, leaving Cole and his new wife, dancer Nadine RobinsonÑwho had also joined the revue, stranded in California. Nat found jobs as a piano soloist and by the time he was 20, his jazz music was known all over the small nightclubs of L.A. In 1937, he debuted his soon to be famous breathy singing style at the Swanee Inn when a drunken customer begged him to sing "Sweet Lorraine." Another night, club owner Bob Lewis urged Cole to wear a gold paper crown while performing with his newly formed trio, dubbing him Nat "King Cole." After making a recording of "Sweet Lorraine," the "King Cole" Trio began to attract jazz enthusiasts from all over and was soon scoring gigs at the hottest venues in town. They toured the county in 1941 and, upon their return to Los Angeles, hired manager Carlos Gastel and disc jockey Al Jarvis to start recording for the Capitol Records Company. The trio's first national hit, one of the biggest hits of 1943-1944, was "Straighten Up and Fly Right," featuring solo singing by Cole.
In the 1940's, the King Cole Trio was in high demand, ruling the airwaves with hits like "Get Your Kicks on Route 66," "The Christmas Song," and a sensational recording of "Nature Boy," written by Eden Ahbez. The group also commanded steep rates for motion picture appearances, receiving over $13,000 for a couple days of work. At their peak, they substituted for Bing Crosby at the Kraft Music Hall radio show and appeared in jazz concerts at Carnegie Hall. Cole's 1949 recording of "Mona Lisa" crossed over into the pop charts and sold over three million copies, making him the most successful African American recording artist of his time. Later that year, Cole added a bongo drummer to his "trio" and embarked on his first European tour. By this time, the internationally renowned Cole had sold over 50 million records at home and abroad and Capitol Records had become known as "The house that Nat built."
Despite worldwide success, Cole battled with the stings of burns of racial discrimination his entire life. He had to fight archaic legislature to retain his home when fellow residents of the fashionable, primarily white Los Angeles suburb tried to force his family out in 1948. In 1956, while performing a concert in Birmingham, Alabama, Cole sustained back injuries when six men attacked him for no apparent reason. In the late 1950s, after appearing in several films, he hosted a 15-minute variety show for NBC. The show was quite successful, but when studio executives failed to find a sponsor for their "black merchandise," they promptly cancelled it. Although Cole attempted throughout his career to play only at venues that allowed African American patrons, his band was often not permitted to stay in the places they had performed just hours earlier.
Although Cole's commercial success as a pop artist was phenomenal, it unfortunately came with the sacrifice of his exemplary and extremely influential talents as a jazz pianist. Before he turned full-time to singing, he had already influenced the likes of Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal, and Ray Charles with his intricate and innovative piano style and piano/guitar/bass lineup. Cole's 1956 album After Midnight proved that he could still play stimulating jazz, but it failed to influence mainstream listeners, many of whom were not even aware that he played the piano. Although his place among jazz greats remains uncontested, many music aficionados consider his career a victory of commercialism over art.
Cole and his first wife, Robinson, divorced in 1946. In 1948, he married singer Marie Ellington, who had once performed regularly with Duke Ellington's band, although she bore no relation to "the Duke." They had two daughters: Stephanie Natalie Marie, born in 1949 and Carol, actually Mrs. Cole's niece, whom they adopted. In 1959, they adopted a son, Nat Kelly Cole. Cole's daughter, Natalie, eventually followed in her father's musical footsteps and forged a successful career in R&B and jazz-based pop, earning several Grammy awards for her 1991 LP Unforgettable with Love, which featured an electronically manipulated duet with her late father.
Although Cole projected a lively and energetic persona in his performances, those close to him knew he often experienced periods of melancholy, possibly due to his delicate health. He suffered from health problems his entire life and in 1953, after collapsing during a jazz concert at Carnegie Hall, he underwent a serious operation for his stomach ulcers. An avid smoker, Cole succumbed to lung cancer on February 15, 1965, at the age of 47.
© 2000 Gale Group. All rights reserved.
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