Nat King Cole

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The American musician Nat Cole (Nathaniel Adams Coles; 1919-1965) was beloved by millions as a singer of popular songs, but his forte was piano, in the "cool" jazz idiom.

Nathaniel Adams Coles, the youngest son of the Reverend Edwards Coles and Perlina (Adams) Coles, was born on March 17, 1917 (St. Patrick's Day), in Montgomery, Alabama. Cole and his family were moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1921 by his father, who served as pastor of the Truelight Spiritual Temple on the South Side of Chicago. By the time he reached the age of 12, Cole was playing the organ and singing in the choir of his father's church under his mother's choir direction.

He took piano lessons "mostly to learn to read, you know. I could play more piano than the teacher." Infatuated with show business, Cole formed his own big band, the Rogues of Rhythm, joined by his older brother Eddie, previously bassist with Noble Sissle's orchestra. First recordings of the Rogues, for Decca Records, are now collector's items.

Working with the band in Chicago nightclubs and dance halls enabled Cole to develop both as a pianist and a singer. He was early influenced by the piano styling of Earl Hines and Jimmy Noone's band. Of Noone's theme song, "Sweet Lorraine," he said, "Man, that was the first song I ever sang." The tune, written by the New Orleans clarinetist Mitchell Parish, became a Cole classic.

Leaving the Chicago circuit, Cole and the band joined the Shuffle Along show scheduled to play the West Coast. Brother Eddie declined the engagement and Cole went along to California where, in 1937, he met and married Nadine Robinson, a chorus girl with the show. When the show folded, he and the band played a short-lived booking at the Ubangi Club in Maywood. "Old musicians never die; they just run out of gigs," said Louie Armstrong once, and when Cole's Ubangi gig was over the band broke up and he went on to do a solo act at the Century Club. From the Century, Cole was hired by Bob Lewis, owner of the Swanee Inn in Hollywood. Lewis insisted on a trio. The booking was for two weeks, but lasted six months.

The Genius of Cole, Moore, and Miller

Cole's first bass player, later to be replaced by the legendary Johnny "Thrifty" Miller, was Wesley Prince, who introduced him to Oscar Moore, a movie studio-guitarist. Although the phenomenal Moore was replaced years later by the excellent guitarist Irving Ashby, the trio reached its apex with the combination of the genius of Cole, Moore, and Miller.

The trio wove a fabric of blues licks, riffs, runs, arpeggios, and scalewise invented melodies, classically composed in an original and precise musical logic, as if nothing were left to chance, when, in fact, every note was a calculated risk controlled by the artists' innate rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic sensibilities - absolute freedoms contained by absolute rules of the musical art. Head arrangements were worked up from sheet music in rehearsals, but were not written down. Rehearsal time nods of the head by Cole signaled Moore and Miller and resulted in smooth transitions from piano to guitar solos and piano-guitar riffs, in the Benny Goodman mode. The three musicians each possessed exceptional improvisational melodic gifts which melded original inventions with jazz conventions.

Their harmonic genius added to a constantly swinging rhythm rooted in Miller's unswerving bass line and Moore's driving four to the measure chordal accompaniment - a beat which inspired the envy of contemporary big bands. Cole's accompaniment style, which backed up Moore's improvisational guitar lines and his own singing, was characterized by piano bass-note rockers and comped (chopped) chords executed by the left hand against exquisitely tasteful fill-ins executed by the right hand.

The trio was an original of the jazz combo which prepared future audiences for the small ensembles later to emerge as a consequence of economic retrenchment in the music industry, causing the demise of the big bands on the road circuit at a time when live radio and television broadcasting costs, too, became, for a while, prohibitive of orchestration on the grand scale.

Legend has it that upon an occasion of Cole's after-hours venture into vocalization with the previously predominantly instrumental trio, a young woman present in the club figuratively crowned him the "King," an affectionate nickname which stuck ever after. Among the "Counts" of Basie and the "Dukes" of Ellington, the title of "King" was reverential and emphasized Cole's high place in the enduring art and history of jazz.

After the Swanee Inn, the trio worked night spots in Hollywood and its environs; later, in Chicago, they played on the same bill with the Bob Crosby band and cut eight sides with Decca, including an early rendition of "Sweet Lorraine," one almost identical to their eventual hit on the Capital label. Moving on through Washington, D.C., they arrived in Manhattan in 1941 to play Nick's in Greenwich Village, Kelly's Stable (uptown), and one week at the Paramount, but the pay was "slim pickens," impelling the trio to return to the West Coast, where they played the 331 Club followed by a 10-week tour of Omaha and a return engagement at the 331 for almost a year, which got them through the winter of 1943-1944.

Lean times were followed by big hits. With the arrival of the spring of 1944 came a second Capital recording of "Straighten Up and Fly Right" and, on the flip side, "I Just Can't See for Lookin'," a novelty lyric derived from an old preacher's joke that Cole had composed and set to music about a buzzard who took a monkey for a ride. With personification came gratification and a series of hits: "Gee, Baby, Ain't I Good to You?" "Bring Another Drink," "If You Can't Smile and Say Yes," "Shy Guy," and then, two real winners, "Frim Fram Sauce" and "Route 66."

Constantly together on the road, Cole, Moore, and Miller lived and breathed their music at work and at play, until they played as one. Most often Cole sang solo, but some tunes were rendered in a unison band chant. His piano talent, synthesized from cross-fertilization of Earl "Fatha" Hines, Fats Waller, Frankie Carl, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Mel Powell, and Teddy Wilson, was the bridge between the preceding style of Art Tatum and the styles to follow of George Shearing and Oscar Peterson. This lineage is, perhaps, best exemplified in Cole's solo rendition of "Body and Soul." Such is the family way in which jazz musicianship develops: first imitation and then innovation; first convention and then invention. Moore had picked up a few tricks along the way from Django Rinehardt, Eddie Lang (Salvatore Mussaro), Charley Christian, and Danny Perri; Miller had profited from listening to "Slam" Stewart and "Bobby" Haggert - but the trio's synthesis was original.

Huge Success as a Single

Cole and some of his Californian friends, including songwriter-singer Frankie Laine, prepared original compositions for what proved to be a successful concert tour, but as success mounted, so the jazz lessened and the popular vocalization increased, and so, too, the trio faded into the background, sometimes appearing with full orchestra in concerti sections; sometimes not appearing at all. With his recording of Mel Torme's "Christmas Song," a new career was launched for Cole which left little room for Moore and Miller; the trio broke up, to be restaffed later on by Cole for occasional gigs. Unfortunately, new success marked the end of old friendship.

There are three major lineages in modern American popular singing. The earliest is the Neapolitan School, which resulted from a fusion of Al Jolson's and Carlo Buti's styles by Russ Columbo, who was the leader in a family of crooners including Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby, Buddy Clark, Perry Como, Dean Martin, and Elvis Presley. The second, the Big Band School, traded Rudy Valley's megaphone for the more sensitive microphone and includes Bob and Ray Eberly, Frank Sinatra, Vic Damone, Steve Lawrence, and Jack Jones. The youngest of the three pre-rock schools is the Cool School, deriving from the harsher toned ancestry of Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Rushing, and Louis Prima to culminate in the smooth, relaxed delivery of Cole, who established a style out of which others grew, including the styles of Mel Torme, Johnny Ray, Johnny Mathis, Oscar Peterson (whose similarity of style with Cole's caused a lifetime contract between them requiring Peterson to refrain from singing), Frankie Laine, Tony Bennett, early Ray Charles, and later, John Pizzarelli, Jr. (son of Bucky).

After seven film contracts with the trio, a long-term contract with the NBC Kraft Music Hall, recording contracts with Decca and Capital, top-ten hits, Metronome Poll awards, Gold Piano and Silver Singing Esquire awards, and a Gold Esquire Guitar award for Moore; after the constant friendship, the countless one-night stands, the concert engagements, and the fame and the fortune, the trio gig was up and Cole was on his own.

Cole never belted a song in his life, but depended on interesting subtleties of vocal timbre and texture and the art of nuance. Even Sinatra admired his intonation. Cole never sang a sour note in his life. He well knew how to hold the vowels and let go of the consonants. He was master of the art of understatement and knew how to capitalize on brief spaces of pregnant silence, as dramatically important to music as sound itself. He mastered the art of rubato, which resulted in an intricate ability to phrase a melodic line and tell a lyric story. The consummate jazz artist became the consummate balladeer, the singer of art and folk songs of the future, an American troubadour.

Cole bought a home in Los Angeles - "my own home," he said, but two lives spent in show business had led to divorce from Nadine. He married for a second and last time to singer Marie Ellington, who, although not related, sang with Duke Ellington's band. He and Marie had three daughters: Carol, Timlin, and Natalie. Natalie followed in her father's swinging footsteps.

After the successes of "Dance, Ballerina, Dance," "Nature Boy," and "Lush Life," there came the sudden and most sad end to the artist's life and the beginning of a landmark of native American music. The sound quality of Cole's voice derived not only from his broad Southern dialect (the vowel sounds almost Italian in pronunciation), his impeccable ear, the microphonic amplification of his tone color, his idiosyncratic pronunciation of "I", or from his velvet falsetto, but also from his cigarette smoking. On a WNEW New York interview shortly before his untimely death in 1965 by throat cancer, he was asked by host William B. Williams how he could smoke so much and still be a singer. Cole responded by saying he had learned two things, the first thing being that the choice of the right key for a song meant everything, and the second being that smoking helps a singer get a husky sound in his voice that the audience loves - "so, if you want to sing, keep on smoking."

When Cole died, a consummate jazz artist and a voice millions knew as the voice of a friend was irreplaceably lost to the world.

Further Reading

Additional information on Nat "King" Cole can be found in Look (April 19, 1955); Newsweek (August 12, 1946); TIME (July 30, 1951); Saturday Evening Post (July 17, 1954); ASCAP Biographical Dictionary of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (1952); and Who Is Who in Music (1951).

singer

Personal Information

Born Nathaniel Adams Coles, March 17, 1919, in Montgomery, AL; son of Edward James (a Baptist minister), and Perlina Adams Coles (a choir director and music instructor); married Nadine Robinson (a dancer), 1937 (divorced, 1946); married Maria Hawkins Ellington (a singer), 1948; children: daughters Carol (adopted), Natalie, Timolin, Casey, and son Kelly (adopted), all children are from the second marriage; died of lung cancer in Santa Monica, CA, February 15, 1965. Education-- Attended Wendell Phillips High School, Chicago, IL.

Career

Jazz pianist and occasional vocalist with the King Cole Trio from 1937 to early 1950s; began recording as a vocalist of popular music in 1946. Recordings with the King Cole Trio include "Straighten Up and Fly Right," 1944; "Route 66," 1944; "Sweet Lorraine," 1944; "For Sentimental Reasons," 1946; and "The Christmas Song," 1946. Solo recordings include "Nature Boy," 1948; "Orange Colored Sky," 1950; "Mona Lisa," 1950; "Unforgettable," 1951; "Too Young," 1951; "Somewhere Along the Way," 1952; "Pretend," 1953; "Answer Me, My Love," 1953; "Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup," 1953; "A Blossom Fell," 1955; "Ramblin' Rose," 1962; and "Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer," 1963. Film appearances include (as a performer with the King Cole Trio) The Stork Club, 1945, See My Lawyer, 1945, Breakfast in Hollywood, 1946; (as an actor) China Gate, 1957, Istanbul, 1957, St. Louis Blues, 1958, Night of the Quarter Moon, 1959, Cat Ballou, 1965. Radio and television work includes a weekly radio program with King Cole Trio, 1946-1947, and a television variety show, The Nat King Cole Show, NBC, 1956-1957.

Life's Work

Nat King Cole was born Nathaniel Adams Coles in 1919 in Montgomery, Alabama. When Cole was four years old, his father, Edward, a Baptist minister, accepted a pastorship of a church in Chicago. The family, which included Cole's mother, Perlina, his older brother, Edward, and two sisters, Eddie Mae and Evelyn, moved north. Two younger brothers, Issac and Lionel (called Freddie), were born later in Chicago. Perlina Coles, choir director at her husband's church, introduced her children to music early on and all four of her sons became professional musicians. As a small child, Cole could pump out "Yes, We Have No Bananas" on the piano and liked to stand in front of the radio with a ruler in his hand, pretending to conduct an orchestra. At age 12, Cole began taking formal lessons in piano and also began playing the organ in his father's church. If his keyboard skills weren't needed at church, he was put into the choir.

While attending Wendell Phillips High School, Cole became enamored of jazz music. The African American community on Chicago's southside was a center of jazz action in the 1930s. Cole and his older brother Eddie went as often as possible to hear jazz and be with jazz musicians. When admission to a performance could not be afforded, Cole would stand in alleys listening at the stage door. He was most influenced by the style of pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines. "It was his driving force that appealed to me ... I was just a kid and coming up, but I latched onto that new Hines style. Guess I still show the influence today," Cole told John Tynan of Down Beat in 1957.

As a teenager, Cole organized two musical groups--a 14-piece band called the Rogues of Rhythm, and a quintet called Nat Coles and his Royal Dukes. He would play with whichever group could get a booking. In addition to music, athletics played a big role in Cole's adolescence and his talent on the baseball diamond drew the interest of scouts from the Negro Leagues. Cole remained a sports fan throughout his life. "The only sport I'm not interested in is horse racing, and that's because I don't know the horses personally," Cole told The Saturday Evening Post in 1954.

At age 16, Cole became the pianist for the Solid Swingers, a quintet formed by his brother Eddie. Late night engagements made keeping up with academic work difficult and Cole gradually dropped out of school before earning a diploma. In 1936, as pianist for the Solid Swingers, Cole participated on several records for the Decca company's Sepia Series. These were "race" records aimed at black audiences. Though the Solid Swingers' recordings did not enjoy much popularity, the fact that a record company had been interested enough to make them in the first place was a big encouragement for Cole to pursue a career in music.

In 1937, Cole and his brother Eddie joined a revival of the revue Shuffle Along. After a six week run in Chicago, the show went on the road. During the tour, Cole married dancer Nadine Robinson. When the Shuffle Along company suddenly folded in Long Beach, California, Cole and Robinson decided to stay on the West Coast. To pay the rent, Cole took whatever job was available. "It was a tough workout. I must have played every beer joint from San Diego to Bakersfield," Cole told the Saturday Evening Post. Despite having to play on out of tune pianos at third rate venues, Cole's extraordinary talent was noticed and he was soon a regular performer at the Century Club, a favorite hangout for Los Angeles area jazz musicians. "All the musicians dug him. We went there just to listen to him because nobody was like him. That cat could play! He was unique," said a musician who saw Cole at the Century Club to biographer James Haskins.

In late 1937 or early 1938, dates differ, Cole was asked to put together a small group to play at the Sewanee Inn, a Los Angeles nightclub. Cole got guitarist Oscar Moore, bassist Wesley Prince, and drummer Lee Young to join the group. When Young failed to appear on opening night, the group went on as a drummer-less trio. Cole was still using his real name Coles. Sewanee Inn owner Bob Lewis nicknamed him King Cole and requested that he wear a gold paper crown during performances. The crown soon disappeared but the nickname stuck. The group became known as the King Cole Trio and its leader became Nat King Cole.

The music scene of the late 1930s was dominated by dance orchestras or "big bands." A trio, especially one without a drummer, was an oddity. Nonetheless, the King Cole Trio developed an enthusiastic local following and found almost constant work at Los Angeles nightspots, including many clubs which had never before hired black performers. The trio recorded with vibraphonist Lionel Hampton and made some recordings of their own for the "race record" market. In early 1941, the trio went on a national tour and ended up spending several months in New York City, playing at top jazz clubs. Though the trio was primarily an instrumental group, Cole occasionally supplied a vocal line to add variation. The shy Cole was a reluctant singer who didn't think he had much vocal talent. Even after becoming one of the most popular singers in the world, his opinion was unchanged. He told the Saturday Evening Post in 1954-- "My voice is nothing to be proud of. It runs maybe two octaves in range. I guess it's the hoarse, breathy noise that some like."

In 1942, soon after the United States entered World War II, the trio's bassist Wesley Prince was drafted into the military. He was replaced by Johnny Miller. Cole was exempted from the draft. Differing accounts attribute this to either flat feet or hypertension. The trio settled into a 48-week run at Los Angeles' 331 Club. In 1943, the trio was signed by Capitol Records, a fledgling operation founded in the previous year by well-known lyricists Johnny Mercer and Buddy DeSylva, and record store owner Glen Wallichs. The trio's Capitol recording of "Straighten Up and Fly Right," with Cole on piano and as featured vocalist, became a hit in 1944. The song appealed to both black and white audiences and crossed the barrier between jazz and popular music. Cole had composed "Straighten Up and Fly Right," basing its lyrics on one of his father's sermons, but he had sold away all rights to the song several years earlier for $50 and earned nothing extra from the hit recording.

The success of the King Cole Trio continued with the hits "Get Your Kicks on Route 66," and "For Sentimental Reasons." The trio also performed in movies including The Stork Club, Breakfast in Hollywood, and See My Lawyer. In 1946 they were hired, along with pianist Eddy Duchin, as summer replacements for Bing Crosby on the radio program Kraft Music Hall. "You have no idea how much satisfaction I got from the acceptance of the trio, because we opened the way for countless other small groups, units that before were strictly for cocktail lounges," Cole told Down Beat in 1957. Cole's career took a major step away from jazz when the trio recorded Mel Torme's "The Christmas Song." A hit in the winter of 1946-1947, "The Christmas Song" was the trio's first recording with a string section accompaniment and was the first recording to emphasize Cole as a singer rather than a singing pianist leading a trio.

Cole's move towards being a singer of popular music was viewed by many jazz purists as an artistic sellout. This shift to the mainstream has been attributed to the influence of Maria Ellington, an intelligent and sophisticated young singer whom Cole met in 1946. "Maria saw that Nat had a limited future as a jazz pianist. He couldn't just sit there and sing and become a big hit. He had to stand up and sing with strings," said Duke Niles, a song-plugger who knew Cole, to biographer Leslie Gourse. Many people around Cole, including fellow trio members Moore and Miller, thought the well-educated Ellington was calculating, domineering, and snobbish. Others say that Cole enjoyed many kinds of music (he was also an excellent classical pianist) and felt hindered by the confines of jazz. He very much wanted to be a big mainstream star and Ellington's guidance merely assisted him in achieving that goal. After obtaining a divorce from Nadine Robinson, Cole married Ellington at a lavish ceremony conducted by Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., at Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church in 1948. Cole and Ellington had three daughters and adopted a son and another daughter.

Having added string accompaniment to his recording of "The Christmas Song," Cole took another step away from jazz with "Nature Boy," which he sang with the backing of a full orchestra. The exotic-sounding ballad was a major hit of 1948. In 1950, another somewhat offbeat ballad, "Mona Lisa," soared to the top of the charts and stayed there for weeks. Gradually Cole began singing "stand up" rather than sitting in front of a piano. The King Cole Trio devolved into window dressing for Cole's solo performances and was finally disbanded in 1955. Success continued with "Unforgettable," "Too Young," "Answer Me, My Love," and "Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup." Cole's mellow delivery was in opposition to the belting offered by other popular singers of the early 1950s such as Eddie Fisher, Johnny Ray, and the young Tony Bennett. His careful enunciation of a lyric enabled him to convey a song with depth and meaning and made his rather limited vocal range seem irrelevant. "Mine is a casual approach to a song; I lean heavily on the lyrics. By that I mean I try to tell a story with the melody as background," Cole told Down Beat in 1954.

In 1956, Cole was given his own television show on NBC-TV. Despite good ratings, the program failed to find a sponsor and left the air after a year. Cole's being African American was seen as the primary cause for the lack of advertising interest. Sponsoring a program that drew a large, if by no means exclusively, black audience was seen as a waste of money by advertisers. Racial incidents cropped up from time to time during Cole's starring career. When he and his wife bought a house in the exclusive Hancock Park section of Los Angeles in 1949, neighbors formed an association to prevent them from moving in. In 1956, at the height of his fame, Cole was attacked by a group of white men while performing in Birmingham, Alabama. Cole was sometimes criticized by other blacks for not taking a more aggressive stand against unfair treatment of racial minorities. He did not refuse to perform before segregated audiences, believing that goodwill and an exhibition of his talent were more effective than formal protests in combating racism.

The advent of rock and roll, the revitalized career of Frank Sinatra (to whom Cole was often compared), and competition from younger black "crooners" such as Johnny Mathis and Harry Belafonte, caused Cole's popularity to fade slightly in the later 1950s. To boost his sagging career, Cole acted in a several films, and organized a touring concert show called "Sights and Sounds," in which he appeared with a group of young singers and dancers called the Merry Young Souls. In the early 1960s, he returned to the top ten with the hits "Ramblin' Rose," and "Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer." Some critics remarked that these vacuous, though catchy, songs were not up to the quality of his earlier hits.

Throughout his adult life, Cole was a heavy smoker who was rarely seen without a cigarette in his hand. After an operation for stomach ulcers in 1953, he was advised to stop smoking but did not do so. Keeping up with a hectic schedule of recording and live appearances, he ignored signs of ill health. In late 1964 he was diagnosed with an advanced case of lung cancer. After unsuccessful medical treatments, he died on February 15, 1965, at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California.

Cole's recordings, both his jazz material and his mainstream work, have been discovered by new generations of fans. In 1991, Cole made a strong resurgence when his daughter Natalie blended her voice with his on a chart-topping new rendition of "Unforgettable." Also in 1991, the Complete Capitol Recordings of the Nat King Cole Trio were released to the delight of jazz fans. Listening to the trio's complete recordings brought new insight into Cole's career. Jay Cocks of Time wrote of Cole, "He wasn't corrupted by the mainstream. He used jazz to enrich and renew it, and left behind a lasting legacy. Very like a king."

Works

Selective Discography

• Albums include King Cole Trio, Vol.1, 1944; King Cole Trio, Vol.2 1946; King Cole Trio, Vol.3, 1948; King Cole for Kids, 1948; King Cole Trio, Vol.4, 1949; Harvest of Hits, 1950; Nat King Cole at the Piano, 1950; Penthouse Serenade, 1952; Cole's Top Pops, 1952; Nat King Cole Sings for Two in Love, 1953; Nat King Cole 10th Anniversary Album, 1955; Vocal Classics, 1955; Instrumental Classics, 1955; Ballads of the Day, 1956; Piano Style of Nat King Cole, 1956; After Midnight, 1957; Love is the Thing, 1957; This is Nat King Cole, 1957; Just One of Those Things, 1958; St. Louis Blues, 1958; Cole Espanol, 1958; The Very Thought of You, 1958; Welcome to the Club, 1959; To Whom It May Concern, 1959; A Mis Amigos, 1959; Everytime I Feel the Spirit, 1959; Tell Me All About Yourself, 1960; Wild Is Love, 1960; Magic of Christmas, 1960; Touch of Your Lips, 1961; Nat Cole Story, 1961; Cole Sings, Shearing Plays, 1962; Swingin' Side of Cole, 1962; More Cole Espagnol, 1962; Ramblin' Rose, 1962; Dear Lonely Hearts, 1962; Where Did Everyone Go?, 1963; Top Pops, 1963; Those Lazy, Hazy Crazy Days, 1963; Let's Face the Music, 1964; I Don't Want to Hurt Anymore, 1964; My Fair Lady, 1964; L-O-V-E, 1965; Cole Sings His Songs from 'Cat Ballou,' 1965; The Nat King Cole Story, Vols.1-3, 1980; The Complete Recordings of the Nat King Cole Trio, 1991.

Further Reading

Books

• Haskins, James, with Kathleen Benson. Nat King Cole. New York: Stein and Day, 1984.
• Gourse, Leslie. Unforgettable: The Life and Mystique of Nat King Cole. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991.

Periodicals

• American Scholar, Summer 1992, pp. 437-443.
• Atlantic, July 1992, pp. 84-86.
• Contemporary Musicians, vol.3, 1990, pp. 41-43.
• Down Beat, January 27, 1954, p. 2; May 2, 1957, p. 13; May 16, 1957, p. 15.
• The Nation, March 5, 1990, pp. 323-324.
• New York Times, February 16, 1965, pp. 1, 35; December 22, 1992, sect. 2, pp.26-28.
• Saturday Evening Post, July 17, 1954, pp. 30, 104-106.
• Time, December 16, 1991, p. 78.
• Washington Post, February 17, 1992, p. D2.

— Mary Kalfatovic

See Nat King Cole Lyrics

• Born: 1939, Montgomery, AL
• Died: February 15, 1965, Santa Monica, CA
• Active: '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s
• Genres: Vocal Music
• Instrument: Vocals, Piano
• Representative Albums: "The Complete Capitol Trio Recordings", "Nat King Cole", "Hit That Jive Jack: The Earliest Recordings
• Representative Songs: "Mona Lisa", "Sweet Lorraine", "Unforgettable

Biography

For a mild-mannered man whose music was always easy on the ear, Nat King Cole managed to be a figure of considerable controversy during his 30 years as a professional musician. From the late '40s to the mid-'60s, he was a massively successful pop singer who ranked with such contemporaries as Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, and Dean Martin. He shared with those peers a career that encompassed hit records, international touring, radio and television shows, and appearances in films. But unlike them, he had not emerged from a background as a band singer in the swing era. Instead, he had spent a decade as a celebrated jazz pianist, leading his own small group. Oddly, that was one source of controversy. For some reason, there seem to be more jazz critics than fans of traditional pop among music journalists, and Cole's transition from jazz to pop during a period when jazz itself was becoming less popular was seen by them as a betrayal. At the same time, as a prominent African-American entertainer during an era of tumultuous change in social relations among the races in the U.S., he sometimes found himself out of favor with different warring sides. His efforts at integration, which included suing hotels that refused to admit him and moving into a previously all-white neighborhood in Los Angeles, earned the enmity of racists; once, he was even physically attacked on-stage in Alabama. But civil rights activists sometimes criticized him for not doing enough for the cause.

Such controversies do not obscure his real talent as a performer, however. The dismay of jazz fans at his abandonment of jazz must be measured against his accomplishments as a jazz musician. An heir of Earl Hines, whom he studied closely as a child in Chicago, Cole was an influence on such followers as Oscar Peterson. And his trio, emerging in the dying days of the swing era, helped lead the way in small-band jazz. The rage felt by jazz fans as he moved primarily to pop singing is not unlike the anger folk music fans felt when Bob Dylan turned to rock in the mid-'60s; in both cases, it was all the more acute because fans felt one of their leaders, not just another musician, was going over to the enemy. Less well remembered, however, are Cole's accomplishments during and after the transition. His rich, husky voice and careful enunciation, and the warmth, intimacy, and good humor of his approach to singing, allowed him to succeed with both ballads and novelties such that he scored over 100 pop chart singles and more than two dozen chart albums over a period of 20 years, enough to rank him behind only Sinatra as the most successful pop singer of his generation.

Nat King Cole was born Nathaniel Adams Coles on Montgomery, AL, on March 17, 1919. (In his early years of music-making, he dispensed with the "s" at the end of his name.) As a black child born to a poor family in the American South at that time, he did not have a birth certificate. His March 17 birthday was recalled because it was also St. Patrick's Day. He listed conflicting years of birth on legal documents during his life; most sources give the year as 1917. But biographer Daniel Mark Epstein, for his 1999 book Nat King Cole, consulted the 1920 census to determine that the Coles household had a male infant at that time and confirm the birth year as 1919. Cole's father was a butcher who aspired to the Baptist ministry, and when Cole was four the family moved to Chicago, where his father eventually succeeded in becoming a preacher.

Like his older brother Eddie, who became a bass player, Cole showed an early interest in music. He was taught piano by his mother as a child and later took lessons. Also like his brother, he turned professional early; by his teens, he was leading a band, called either the Royal Dukes or the Rogues of Rhythm, and he dropped out of high school at 15 to go into music full-time. The following year, Eddie, who had been touring with Noble Sissle's band, returned to Chicago and the brothers organized their own sextet. On July 28, 1936, as Eddie Cole's Swingsters, they recorded two singles for Decca Records, Nat King Cole's recording debut. That fall, they were hired to perform in a revival of the all-black Broadway musical revue Shuffle Along. Unlike his brother, Cole remained with the show when it went on tour, in part because his girlfriend, dancer Nadine Robinson, stayed with it as well. The two married in Michigan on January 27, 1937, even though Cole was only 17 years old. The tour made its way around the country, finally closing in Los Angeles in May. Cole and his wife remained there, living at first with her aunt, while Cole sought employment as a musician. He briefly led a big band, then played solo piano in clubs.

While performing at the Café Century during the summer of 1937, Cole was approached by the manager of the Swanee Inn, who invited him to put together a small band to play in the club. With guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Wesley Prince, the act debuted that fall, drawing upon the children's nursery rhyme ("Old King Cole was a merry old soul...") for the name the King Cole Swingsters, later simply the King Cole Trio. The group gradually built up a following, with Cole emerging as a singer as well as a pianist. By September 1938, they had begun making radio transcriptions, originally not intended for commercial release, though they have since been issued. In 1939 and 1940, they made occasional recordings for small labels while expanding their live performing to include appearances across the country and radio work. In late 1940 they were contracted by Decca. Their 1941 recording of Cole's composition "That Ain't Right" hit number one on Billboard magazine's Harlem Hit Parade (i.e., R&B) chart on January 30, 1943, Cole's first successful record. By that time, Prince had left the group to work for the war effort, replaced by Johnny Miller.

The King Cole Trio's contract with Decca expired before "That Ain't Right" became a hit. Their next single, "All for You," was recorded for the tiny Excelsior label in October 1942. After its initial release, it was purchased by Capitol Records and reissued. On November 20, 1943, it became the group's second number one hit on the Harlem Hit Parade. It also crossed over to the pop chart. With that, Capitol signed Cole directly. The trio's first Capitol session produced both the Cole composition "Straighten Up and Fly Right," which topped the black chart for the first of ten weeks on April 29, 1944, spent six weeks at the top of the folk (i.e., country) chart, and reached the Top Ten of the pop chart, and "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You," which topped the black chart on October 21 and also crossed over to the pop chart.

The trio placed another four titles in the black chart during 1944, and Capitol released its debut album, The King Cole Trio (catalog number BD-8) that fall. The collection of four 78 rpm discs contained eight tracks, only three of them featuring Cole vocals. When Billboard instituted its first album chart on March 24, 1945, The King Cole Trio was ranked at number one, a position it held for 12 weeks. At the same time, big-band swing music was declining in popularity, and many jazz fans were beginning to turn to the emerging style of bebop, a development that, whatever its artistic significance, spelled the end of jazz as a broadly popular style of music.

The King Cole Trio -- and particularly the singer/pianist then known as "King Cole" -- on the other hand, was going in exactly the opposite direction, as its success on records and at clubs and theaters around the country led to appearances in films and on radio. After numerous guest-star stints on Bing Crosby's Kraft Music Hall radio series, the trio, along with pianist Eddy Duchin, was hired to host the show's summer replacement program for 13 weeks beginning May 16, 1946. During that run, on August 17, The King Cole Trio, Vol. 2 (Capitol BD-29), another set of four 78s, hit number one. Over the next five days, the trio recorded two songs that would add to their pop success. Mel Tormé and Robert Wells' "The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You)" (better known by its opening line, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire"), recorded August 19, was Cole's first disc to feature strings. "(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons," though it only featured the trio, demonstrated that Cole was more than capable of handling a straight romantic ballad, not just the uptempo novelties with which he and the group had succeeded up until this point.

"(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons" became Cole's first number one pop single on December 28, 1946; "The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You)" peaked at number three, going on to become a holiday perennial and million seller. While these hits were developing, the trio went from its summer replacement berth to its own network radio series, King Cole Trio Time, a 15-minute Saturday afternoon program that debuted on October 19, 1946, and ran until April 1948. The group's recording schedule during the first half of 1947 was relatively light, but the pace picked up considerably starting in August, in anticipation of the musicians' strike called for January 1, 1948. On August 22, 1947, with an orchestral backing, Cole recorded "Nature Boy," an unusual philosophical ballad. Released March 29, 1948, and credited to "King Cole," it hit number one for the first of eight weeks on May 8, becoming a gold record.

Oscar Moore, the trio's original guitarist, left the group in October 1947 after ten years and was replaced by Irving Ashby. In March 1948, Cole divorced his wife and married singer Marie Ellington. Among the couple's children was Natalie Cole, who became a singer. Bass player Johnny Miller quit the trio in August 1948 and was replaced by Joe Comfort. In February 1949, Cole added percussionist Jack Costanzo to the group, which thereafter was billed as "Nat 'King' Cole & the Trio." As of the spring of 1950, Cole's recordings were being credited simply to "Nat 'King' Cole." On July 8 of that year, his recording of the wistful movie theme "Mona Lisa," featuring a string chart arranged by Nelson Riddle, became Cole's third number one pop hit and gold record.

That September, he traveled to Europe for his first international tour, beginning a pattern that would find him giving concerts almost continually in a combination of top nightclubs in major cities and concert halls around the U.S., with occasional trips to Europe, the Far East, and Latin America and extended stays at Las Vegas casinos. In these appearances, he stood for most of the show, only occasional sitting down to play a number or two at the piano. Ashby and Comfort left in 1951, and an announcement was made that the trio was officially dissolved, but that simply meant that Cole henceforth would be billed as a solo act. In practice, he continued to carry a guitarist, John Collins, and a bassist, Charles Harris, along with Costanzo (until he left in 1953 and was replaced by drummer Lee Young), while often augmenting them with an orchestra.

Cole scored his fourth number one pop hit and gold record with "Too Young," which topped the charts on June 23, 1951. His recording of "Unforgettable" peaked at only number 12 on February 2, 1952, but it went on to become one of his better remembered recordings; in 1991, a version of the song by Natalie Cole with the Nat King Cole recording dubbed onto it became a gold record and won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year. With his 1952 LP Penthouse Serenade, Cole showed that he was not yet ready to dispense with his jazz chops entirely. The disc was an instrumental collection that spent one week at number ten in the album chart in October. Meanwhile, he was also looking for new challenges, taking on small acting roles in the films The Blue Gardenia and Small Town Girl and the television drama Song for a Banjo in 1953. His 1953 album Nat King Cole Sings for Two in Love, arranged and conducted by Nelson Riddle, was a Top Ten hit in early 1954 that predated similar "concept" albums by Frank Sinatra.

Although Cole did not score a number one hit in 1953 ("Pretend" peaked at number two), his seven chart entries were enough to rank him among the ten most successful singles artists of the year. His five chart singles in 1954, among them the gold-selling Top Ten hit "Answer Me, My Love," allowed him to repeat this ranking the following year, and he did the same thing in 1955 with another eight chart entries, including the Top Ten hits "Darling Je Vous Aime Beaucoup," "A Blossom Fell," and "If I May." Nine more chart entries allowed him to stay among the most successful singles artists in 1956, even though none of them reached the Top Ten, and he maintained his rank for the fifth straight year in 1957, reaching the Top Ten (and the top of the R&B chart) with "Send for Me." Though he managed one more Top Ten hit, "Looking Back," in 1958, the rise of rock & roll diminished his success on the singles chart. Meanwhile, he returned to a jazz approach on his 1957 LP After Midnight, which paired his backup group with jazz musicians Harry "Sweets" Edison, Stuff Smith, Willie Smith, and Juan Tizol. It was a modest commercial success, quickly followed by the ballad album Love Is the Thing, arranged and conducted by Gordon Jenkins, which hit number one for the first of eight weeks on May 27, 1957, and eventually was certified platinum.

Meanwhile, in the fall of 1956, Cole became the first African-American host of a network television series when The Nat "King" Cole Show debuted as a 15-minute weekly program on November 5. The show was expanded to a half-hour in July 1957 and ran until December of that year, though it never attracted a national sponsor that might have made it an ongoing success. Cole attributed advertisers' reticence to racism. He returned to his acting career during 1957, appearing in Istanbul and China Gate, and got his most substantial role in 1958 playing blues musician W.C. Handy in a film biography, St. Louis Blues. His last acting role came in Night of the Quarter Moon in 1959. In 1960, he turned his attention to the theater, putting together a musical revue intended for Broadway. The songs were by Dotty Wayne and Ray Rasch, and the album Cole made of them, Wild Is Love, became his first Top Ten LP in three years. The corresponding stage show, I'm With You, was not as successful, opening what was intended to be a pre-Broadway tour in Denver on October 17, 1960, but closing in Detroit on November 26. Cole, however, salvaged the concept of the show for a stage production he called Sights and Sounds: The Merry World of Nat King Cole, featuring a group of dancers and singers, with which he toured regularly from 1961 to 1964.

Cole returned to the Top Ten of the singles chart for the first time in four years with the country-tinged "Ramblin' Rose" in 1962; his album of the same name also reached the Top Ten and eventually was certified platinum. "Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer" became his last Top Ten hit in the summer of 1963. In December 1964, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Two months later, he died of it at the age of 45.

After his death, Cole continued to appeal to the two almost mutually exclusive audiences that had appreciated him during his life. Jazz fans continued to treasure his recordings of the 1930s and 1940s and to dismiss the non-jazz recordings he had made later. (In 1994, German discographer Klaus Teubig compiled Straighten Up and Fly Right: A Chronology and Discography of Nat "King" Cole, which pointedly cut off in the early '50s.) Pop fans clamored for reissues of Cole's 1950s and '60s music, awarding gold record status to compilations that Capitol continued to assemble, without much worrying about the singer's talent as a piano player. (And, as his recordings fell into the public domain in Europe, where there is a 50-year copyright limit, a spate of low-quality reissues assumed flood levels.) But the ongoing debate was only testament to Cole's ongoing attraction for music lovers, which, in the decades following his untimely end, showed no signs of abating. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide

Timeles Nat King Cole Shows Buy this CD	Best of Nat King Cole [CEMA] Buy this CD	Best of Nat King Cole [CEMA] Buy this CD	Best of Nat King Cole [Capitol 2005] Buy this CD	Best of Nat King Cole [Capitol 2005] Buy this CD
After Midnight [Bonus Tracks] Buy this CD	Definitive Nat "King" Cole Buy this CD	In the Mood for Love Buy this CD	Live at the Circle Room Buy this CD	For Sentimental Reasons [Skylark] Buy this CD

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• Born: Mar 17, 1919 in Montgomery, Alabama
• Died: Feb 15, 1965 in Santa Moncia, California
• Occupation: Actor
• Active: '40s-'50s, '80s-2000s
• Major Genres: Music
• Career Highlights: Kiss Me Deadly, Cat Ballou, St. Louis Blues
• First Major Screen Credit: Breakfast in Hollywood (1946)

Biography

Nat "King" Cole is best remembered as an extremely popular and influential jazz and pop artist whose career spanned the mid-'30s through the early '60s -- some of his biggest hits include "Mona Lisa" and "Unforgettable" -- but he also made a few appearances in film. As an actor, his most famous role is that of W.C. Handy in St. Louis Blues (1958). The father of pop singer Natalie Cole, he was only 46 when he died of lung cancer. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Harlem Renaissance: The Music & Rhythms That Started a Cultural Revolution Buy this Movie	The Snader Telescriptions: Nat "King" Cole Buy this Movie	Music Classics, Vol. 7 Buy this Movie	Music Classics, Vol. 8 Buy this Movie
Oscar Peterson: Music in the Key of Oscar Buy this Movie	Music Classics, Vol. 2 Buy this Movie	The Incomparable Nat "King" Cole Buy this Movie	Nat "King" Cole: Unforgettable Buy this Movie

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