Nathaniel Adams Coles March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965, Known professionally by his stage name Nat King Cole, Was an American singer, jazz pianist, & actor. Cole’s career as a jazz & pop vocalist started in the late 1930s & spanned almost three decades where he found success & recorded over 100 songs that became hits on the pop charts.
Cole started his career as a jazz pianist in the late 1930s, when he formed The King Cole Trio, Which became the top selling group, & the only black act, On Capitol Records in the 1940s. Cole’s trio was the model for small jazz ensembles that followed. Starting in 1950, He transitioned to become a solo singer billed as Nat King Cole. Despite achieving mainstream success, Cole faced intense racial discrimination during his career. While not a major vocal public figure in the civil rights movement, Cole was a member of his local NAACP branch & participated in the 1963 March on Washington. He regularly performed for civil rights organizations. From 1956 to 1957, Cole hosted the NBC variety series The Nat King Cole Show, which became the first nationally broadcast television show hosted by an African American.
Some of Cole’s most notable singles include, Unforgettable, Smile, L-O-V-E, Nature Boy, When I Fall in Love, Let There Be Love, Mona Lisa, Autumn Leaves, Stardust, Straighten Up and Fly Right,
The Very Thought of You, For Sentimental Reasons, Embraceable You & Almost Like Being in Love. His 1960 Christmas album The Magic of Christmas, Also known as The Christmas Song, Is the best selling Christmas album released in the 1960s, & was ranked as one of the 40 essential Christmas albums, 2019 by Rolling Stone. In 2022, Cole’s recording of, The Christmas Song, broke the record for the longest journey to the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100, When it peaked at number nine, 62 years after it debuted on the chart, & was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry. NPR named him one of the 50 Great Voices. Cole received numerous accolades including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 1960 & a Special Achievement Golden Globe Award. Posthumously, Cole has received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award 1990, along with the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award, 1992 & has been inducted into the Downbeat Jazz Hall of Fame 1997, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2000, & the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame 2020. Cole was the father of singer Natalie Cole 1950 – 2015, Who covered her father’s songs in the 1991 album Unforgettable… with Love.
Nat’s Early Life.
born in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 17, 1919. He had three brothers. Eddie 1910–1970, Ike 1927–2001, & Freddy 1931–2020, & a half-sister, Joyce Coles. Each of the Coles brothers pursued careers in music. When Cole was four years old, The family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where his father, Edward, became a Baptist minister.
Cole learned to play the organ from his mother, Perlina Coles, The church organist. His first performance was, Yes! We Have No Bananas, At the age of four. Cole began formal piano lessons at 12, Learning jazz, gospel, & classical music, From Johann Sebastian Bach to Sergei Rachmaninoff. As a youth, Cole joined the news delivery boys’ Bud Billiken Club band for The Chicago Defender. Cole & his family moved to the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, where Cole attended Wendell Phillips Academy High School, The school Sam Cooke attended a few years later. Cole participated in Walter Dyett’s music program at DuSable High School. He would sneak out of the house to visit clubs, sitting outside to hear Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, & Jimmie Noone.
Nat’s Early career.
Paramount Theater, New York City, November 1946 When he was 15, Cole dropped out of high school to pursue a music career. After his brother Eddie, a bassist, Came home from touring with Noble Sissle, They formed a sextet & recorded two singles for Decca in 1936 as Eddie Cole’s Swingsters. They performed in a revival of the musical Shuffle Along. Nat Cole went on tour with the musical. In 1937, he married Nadine Robinson, Who was a member of the cast. After the show ended in Los Angeles, Cole & Nadine settled there while he looked for work. Cole led a big band & found work playing piano in nightclubs. When a club owner asked him to form a band, Cole hired bassist Wesley Prince & guitarist Oscar Moore. They called themselves The King Cole Swingsters after the nursery rhyme in which, Old King Cole was a merry old soul. They changed their name to, The King Cole Trio before making radio transcriptions & recording for small labels.
Nat Cole recorded, Sweet Lorraine, In 1940, & it became his first hit. According to legend, His career as a vocalist started when a drunken bar patron demanded that Cole sing the song. He said that this fabricated story sounded good, So Cole did not argue with it. There was a customer one night who demanded that he sing, but because it was a song Cole did not know, He sang, Sweet Lorraine, Instead. As people heard Cole’s vocal talent, They requested more vocal songs, & he obliged. In 1941, The trio recorded, That Ain’t Right, For Decca, The year after followed by, All for You, for Excelsior. They recorded, I’m Lost, A song written by Otis René, The owner of Excelsior.
Nat King Cole, Voice of America interview, 1956. I started out to become a jazz pianist, In the meantime I started singing & I sang the way I felt & that’s just the way it came out.
Cole was the original house pianist for Jazz at the Philharmonic & performed at the first recorded concert in 1944. He was credited on Mercury as, Shorty Nadine, A derivative of his wife’s name, Because Cole had an exclusive contract with Capitol since signing with the label the year before. He used a variety of other pseudonyms for the same reason, including Eddie Laguna, Sam Schmaltz, Nature Boy & A Guy, Or whatever name for himself he could think of, but only as an instrumentalist, never as a vocalist. Cole recorded with Illinois Jacquet & Lester Young. The King Cole Trio’s Time on NBC with Cole on piano, Oscar Moore on guitar, & Johnny Miller on double bass, In 1946, The trio broadcast King Cole Trio Time, a 15-minute radio program. This was the first radio program to be hosted by a black musician. From 1946 to 1948, The trio recorded radio transcriptions for Capitol Records Transcription Service. They performed on the radio programs Swing Soiree, Old Gold, The Chesterfield Supper Club, Kraft Music Hall, & The Orson Welles Almanac. Cole began recording & performing pop oriented material in which he was often accompanied by a string orchestra. Cole’s stature as a popular star was cemented by hits such as, All for You, 1943, The Christmas Song, 1947, (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66, (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons, 1946, There! I’ve Said It Again, 1947, Nature Boy, 1948, Frosty the Snowman, Mona Lisa, The Number 1 song of 1950, Orange Colored Sky, 1950, Too Young, The Number 1 song of 1951.
