“With Love.” No longer trying to keep up with current sounds, Cole paid tribute to her father with reworked versions of some of his best-known songs, including “That Sunday That Summer”, “Too Young” and “Mona Lisa”. Her voice should have had more time to sing standards and soul classics.
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Cole performed at the Highland Park venue five times over the years, beginning in 1993. “She was a very talented, kind hearted soul!”
One of Natalie Cole’s most memorable albums was her 1991 release, Unforgettable…With Love.
A file picture taken on February 8, 2009, shows singer Natalie Cole with the Grammy award for the Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for “Still Unforgettable”. “That’s what you are”. “With Love”, sold some 14 million copies and won six Grammys.
She expressed her gratitude for their support and said, “I love you all”, her family told the Daily Mail. “Then I cried a whole lot”.
Cole’s musical curiosity and diversity, and her affection for her dad, would continue to inform her projects. With Love, which featured her “Unforgettable” duet with her late father, who died in 1965. The album was a phenomenon, its appeal crossing audiences and generations; it collected a bevy of Grammy Awards, including Album, Record and Song of the Year (though the song Unforgettable was at that point four decades old). “I’m a fighter, not a chump”, she said. She sang R&B, jazz, and pop music. In 2009, during an appearance on Larry King Live, Cole received emails from fans who offered her one of their kidneys. At age 11, Cole began performing professionally. In her 2000 autobiography, Angel on My Shoulder, she recounted her lifelong battle with substance abuse.
Her career was inextricably linked to that of her father.
“It was real tough for her to get started, but when she kicked in, she was 100 percent”, he recalls. As she grew up without her father’s guidance, Cole never abandoned music.
After her death, David Foster posted a photo on social media of him and Natalie during one of their numbers.
‘We will miss her like insane.’ – Rosie O’Donnell. Cole replied, “But Father Jim, a woman has to have choices”. After the success of “Inseparable“, she collected a Grammy in 1976 for the song “Sophisticated Lady (She’s A Different Lady)”. But her life was marred by personal woes including drug use and three divorces. A few years later, I had the honor of actually singing it with her on stage.
When it came to her music, Natalie Cole did anything but fail.
Cole toured through much of her illness, often receiving dialysis at hospitals around the globe. Reportedly, the cause of death was a series of complications arising from Ms. Cole’s well-known health issues, according to family members.
Besides her earlier memoir, her books included “Love Brought Me Back: A Journey of Loss and Gain” (2010), written with David Ritz, an account of her renal disease and wait for an organ donor. Cole is survived by her son, Yancy, 38 and her sisters Timolin and Casey.
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“That was really my thank you”, she told People magazine in 2006.
