“She was a very talented, kind hearted soul!”
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Yet Cole overcame these tribulations with such glorious consistency that it was a shock to begin the New Year hearing news of her passing the night of December 31 at age 65 from congestive heart disease.
She had previously experimented with drugs like LSD and heroin, but it was cocaine that sent her into a spiral as her career and marriage faltered.
Tony Bennett, the 89-year-old jazz and big band singer who performed both with her and her father, hailed Natalie Cole as “a lovely and generous person who will be greatly missed”. She was as versed in Sarah Vaughan as she was in The Beatles, with her father bringing everything from orchestral pop to blues into their house. The performance resulted in Natalie leaving her medical career behind to take his place in the group.
In 2012, Cole lost her mother, Maria, after her brief battle with cancer.
One measure of Natalie Cole’s artistry was her way with a duet. “We sang “Our Love is Here to Stay” and after we hugged each other and vowed to do it again”. A decade after losing her father, Nat’s little girl had been catapulted into the center of late 70s stardom.
COLE: (Singing)…Oh lord, that you mean so much to me. “I was starting to get it”, she said. “She represented the Cole legend of excellence and class quite well”. “There was always music playing at our house in one room or another”, Cole wrote in her 2000 memoir, Angel on My Shoulder.
What is your fondest memory of Natalie Cole’s life and/or career?
“I didn’t shed really any real tears until the album was over”, Cole told The Associated Press in 1991. After the success of “Inseparable”, she collected a Grammy in 1976 for the song “Sophisticated Lady (She’s A Different Lady)”. He’s NPR Music’s R&B expert. Her mother even filed for conservatorship in 1982.
Cole’s musical curiosity and diversity, and her affection for her dad, would continue to inform her projects. My first hits, in fact, were straight-up rhythm and blues.
I Love and will Miss her.
I see the influence of Natalie Cole all over me. In 1992, she won three Grammys – Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Best Traditional Pop Performance. My heartfelt prayers and condolences go out to her family and friends. She never stopped pushing herself; never stopped being open.
“I think that I am a walking testimony to you can have scars”, she told People magazine.
COLE: It says, if I had the second chance, oh, I’d do it a whole lot differently. Here’s Natalie Cole speaking to NPR in 2006 about this.
Perhaps in a way to understand her upbringing, she elected to study child psychology at the University of MA. You can’t moan and whine and feel sorry for yourself when the consequences aren’t what you hoped they would be. “Instead of dancing around the stage, maybe I’ll just walk elegantly”. Keep your ear to the ground.
As the year comes to a close, so does the music of one of America’s most loved musicians.
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By the time Natalie Cole was 11, she was performing alongside her father on his TV show. She was a survivor. She will be truly missed but her light will shine forever!’ – Patti LaBelle.
