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Jazz singer Natalie Cole dies at 65 after ‘unforgettable’ career

“I think that I am a walking testimony that you can have scars”, she told CBS’s Sunday Morning in 2006. But you know the saying: These are the best of times and the worst of times.

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First known as the daughter of jazz icon Nat “King” Cole, singer Natalie Cole made a name for herself on her own talent, and now, Natalie Cole has died at age 65.


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“Natalie fought a fierce, courageous battle, dying how she lived – with dignity, strength and honor”, her family said in a statement. “With Love”, an album of songs related to her father, the silky-voiced singer who was one of the most popular performers of the 1940s and ’50s but died before his daughter began her solo career. She represented the Cole legend of excellence and class quite well.’ – Aretha Franklin.


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Cole’s final album, in 2008, was entitled “Still Unforgettable” and expanded on the theme of her 1991 work by adapting classic American tunes in addition to those of her father.

Cole maintained her recording and performing career, most recently recording an album in Spanish, “Natalie Cole in Español”.

Nat “King” Cole died of lung cancer in 1965. She grew up in the neighborhood of Hancock Park.

Given that Natalie Cole had neither the improv chops nor the artistic bohemianism of, say, jazz mavericks like Dianne Reeves or Cassandra Wilson, her jazz discography (including records like 1993’s Take a Look, 1996’s Stardust and 2008’s Still Unforgettable) is competent, genteel, tasteful and respectable, but hardly transcendent.

She was one Dear Sister.

She rocketed to the top of the charts with her debut album Inseparable, in May 1975.

“I don’t remember what I sounded like, I was too much in awe of her”, she said in her lengthy Instagram tribute.

Ms. Cole said that as her success increased, her drug problem worsened.

“We had no idea of the magnitude of the personalities around us”, she wrote in her memoir, “Angel On My Shoulder” (2000), co-authored with Digby Diehl.

A rehab stint in 1983 turned her life around, she said. In time, she rebounded, releasing the albums “Dangerous” (1985), “Everlasting” (1987) and “Good to Be Back” (1989) before “Unforgettable: With Love”.

She was reportedly addicted to drugs and suffered from hepatitis C eight years ago. Exhausted, she continued performing until her rapidly declining health was tied to kidney disease, likely a result of the medication she was using to treat her hepatitis C.

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Cole’s musical curiosity and diversity, and her affection for her dad, would continue to inform her projects.

Natalie Cole dead at 65