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Jordin Sparks and Tony Bennett lead celebrity tributes to Natalie Cole
The celebrated jazz, soul and R&B singer, who had her first hit in the mid-1970s with the song “This Will Be”, struggled with drug addiction throughout much of her life.
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Notables were quick to express their condolences. In a tweet, actress Marlee Matlin called Cole a lovely songbird and a great actress, writing “she is now singing in heaven”. This musical Icon from Musical Royalty will be missed.
“In a way, and not just in lineage”, he added in a statement, “Natalie was the connector between the great singers of her father and Ella’s generation, and the great female voices who were to dominate in the last 25 years”. Her father was legendary crooner Nat King Cole, and her mother, Maria Cole, sang with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
The daughter of jazz legend and road hound Nat King Cole, she described her childhood as bereft of “family moments such as barbecues, going to the beach… they were only on holidays”. Her jazzy voice telling stories that only one would dare of hearing made people dream again, and put music back into the bloodstream of their everyday life. Despite a bevy of worthwhile contenders to the throne bearing first names like Roberta, Chaka, Minnie and Mavis, it was actually Natalie Cole’s 1975 debut Inseparable that stormed the palace, broke Aretha’s Grammy streak and unseated the Queen. Popular soul ballad “I’ve Got Love on My Mind” led the way for 1977’s Unpredictable.
Cole’s health and habits had been the subject of numerous headlines over the years. That same year, Cole was arrested in Toronto, Canada, for heroin possession, which she discussed in her autobiography. Her mother even filed for conservatorship in 1982.
Cole went to rehab in 1983 and told the Inquirer that her recovery is a “day-to-day process”.
“Somehow, at some point halfway through those 30 days, I went from not wanting to be there to being afraid to leave”. I pray that precious memories of her, filled with joy and laughter soon overshadow the pain of their loss.
Cole began a comeback in the late ’80s that was capped by 1991’s “Unforgettable …”
Her album, Unforgettable… With Love (1991), won the Grammy for Album of the Year and has sold more than 7 million copies in the United States. Unforgettable won six Grammys, including Album of the Year.
In the TV movie, Lily in Winter, 1994, she played a nanny who was reported to have kidnapped her employer’s nine-year-old son.
Flowers are placed on the star of singer Natalie Cole on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on January 1, 2016 in Hollywood, California. In addition to Sinatra, Cole teamed with another curmudgeonly song stylist, Van Morrison, who invited her to sing “These Are the Days” on his own “Duets: Re-working the Catalog”. The hit song “Unforgettable” blended together recordings of her father and her own tracks, making it sound like the two were singing a duet.
In 2008 she was diagnosed with the hepatitis C virus, which Cole said was a legacy of her time abusing drugs.
She underwent a kidney transplant in 2009, which inspired her second book.
“I’m an ex-drug addict and I don’t take that kind of stuff lightly”, Cole explained at the 2009 Grammy Awards. She wrote: “I am so sad to hear about Natalie Cole’s passing”. He wrote about the long friendship that he had with not only Natalie, but also with her father and her entire family.
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Cole continued to tour, receiving dialysis three times per week between performances.