After years of battling health issues, nine-time Grammy-winning chanteuse Natalie Cole passed away from congestive heart failure at the age of 65 on Thursday night, according to The Associated Press. Natalie was born and raised in Los Angeles where she was exposed early to numerous great singers of the time not only through their music but in person through her father, Nat, and mother Maria Hawkins who was a former singer with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
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Cole told Larry King during an appearance on his show in April 2009 that doctors said she needed a kidney transplant.
With her new album, “Unforgettable”, a lush and tender tribute to Nat’s songs, Natalie has found a way to musically bridge the generation gap. She saw and touched the world through her journey of life and with her lovely voice. Some of her top hits were “This Will Be”, as well as “Our Love”. “I was a heroin addict, sharing needles with the crowd I was with”, she herself admitted to People magazine in 2008. Cole has one son, Robert Adam “Robbie” Yancy from her first marriage to Marvin Yancy.
“As South Africans, we shall remember her fondly, as our sister in song, and our comrade against apartheid”. She spent six months in rehab in 1983. The iconic songstress had hepatitis C and health problems that required her to undergo a kidney transplant in 2009. While attending the University of MA and studying psychology, she sang in nightclubs, and was often billed as “Nat King Cole’s daughter”.
Cole, who received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, wrote a pair of memoirs and starred in a 2001 made-for-TV movie “Livin’ For Love: The Natalie Cole Story”.
Her most renowned effort was 1991’s Unforgettable, a collection of covers that went seven times platinum and won the Grammy for album of the year. Instead of a huge flop, the album of pre-rock standards became a blockbuster and cemented Cole’s legacy. In her 2000 autobiography, Angel on My Shoulder, she recounted her lifelong battle with substance abuse. Her most recent work was 2013’s “Natalie Cole en Espanol”. Her career began with the 1975 debut album, Inseparable, featuring the hit This Will Be. Still, no acting roles eclipse her love and passion for music.
“I didn’t realize how close I was to checking out”, Cole, said.
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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.
