Ultimate Nat King Cole
Glendora Spink
Cole started his career as a jazz pianist in the late 1930s, when he formed The King Cole Trio, which became the top-selling group (and the only black act) on Capitol Records in the 1940s. Cole's trio was the model for small jazz ensembles that followed. Starting in 1950, he transitioned to become a solo singer billed as Nat King Cole. Despite achieving mainstream success, Cole faced intense racial discrimination during his career. While not a major vocal public figure in the civil rights movement, Cole was a member of his local NAACP branch and participated in the 1963 March on Washington. He regularly performed for civil rights organizations. From 1956 to 1957, Cole hosted the NBC variety series The Nat King Cole Show, which became the first nationally broadcast television show hosted by an African American.
Some of Cole's most notable singles include "Unforgettable", "Smile", "L-O-V-E", "Nature Boy", "When I Fall in Love", "Let There Be Love", "Mona Lisa", "Autumn Leaves", "Stardust", "Straighten Up and Fly Right", "The Very Thought of You", "For Sentimental Reasons", "Embraceable You" and "Almost Like Being in Love". His 1960 Christmas album The Magic of Christmas (also known as The Christmas Song), is the best-selling Christmas album released in the 1960s; and was ranked as one of the 40 essential Christmas albums (2019) by Rolling Stone.[2] In 2022, Cole's recording of "The Christmas Song", broke the record for the longest journey to the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100, when it peaked at number nine, 62 years after it debuted on the chart; and was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry.[3][4] NPR named him one of the 50 Great Voices. Cole received numerous accolades including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1960) and a Special Achievement Golden Globe Award.[5] Posthumously, Cole has received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1990), along with the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award (1992) and has been inducted into the Downbeat Jazz Hall of Fame (1997), Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2000), and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame (2020).
Cole learned to play the organ from his mother, Perlina Coles, the church organist.[10] His first performance was "Yes! We Have No Bananas" at the age of four.[11] Cole began formal piano lessons at 12,[12] learning jazz, gospel, and classical music "from Johann Sebastian Bach to Sergei Rachmaninoff".[13] As a youth, Cole joined the news delivery boys' "Bud Billiken Club" band for The Chicago Defender.[14]
Cole and his family moved to the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago,[15] where Cole attended Wendell Phillips Academy High School,[16] the school Sam Cooke attended a few years later.[17] Cole participated in Walter Dyett's music program at DuSable High School.[18] He would sneak out of the house to visit clubs, sitting outside to hear Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, and Jimmie Noone.[19]
When he was 15, Cole dropped out of high school to pursue a music career. After his brother Eddie, a bassist, came home from touring with Noble Sissle, they formed a sextet and recorded two singles for Decca in 1936 as Eddie Cole's Swingsters. They performed in a revival of the musical Shuffle Along. Nat Cole went on tour with the musical. In 1937, he married Nadine Robinson, who was a member of the cast. After the show ended in Los Angeles, Cole and Nadine settled there while he looked for work.[20]
Cole led a big band and found work playing piano in nightclubs. When a club owner asked him to form a band, Cole hired bassist Wesley Prince and guitarist Oscar Moore. They called themselves the King Cole Swingsters after the nursery rhyme in which "Old King Cole was a merry old soul". They changed their name to the King Cole Trio before making radio transcriptions and recording for small labels.[20]
Cole recorded "Sweet Lorraine" in 1940, and it became his first hit.[21] According to legend, his career as a vocalist started when a drunken bar patron demanded that Cole sing the song. He said that this fabricated story sounded good, so Cole did not argue with it. There was a customer one night who demanded that he sing, but because it was a song Cole did not know, he sang "Sweet Lorraine" instead. As people heard Cole's vocal talent, they requested more vocal songs, and he obliged.[22]
Cole was the original house pianist for Jazz at the Philharmonic and performed at the first recorded concert in 1944. He was credited on Mercury as "Shorty Nadine", a derivative of his wife's name, because Cole had an exclusive contract with Capitol[26] since signing with the label the year before. He used a variety of other pseudonyms for the same reason, including Eddie Laguna, Sam Schmaltz, Nature Boy and A Guy, "or whatever name for himself he could think of, but only as an instrumentalist, never as a vocalist."[27] Cole recorded with Illinois Jacquet and Lester Young.[21]
In 1946, the trio broadcast King Cole Trio Time, a 15-minute radio program. This was the first radio program to be hosted by a black musician. From 1946 to 1948, the trio recorded radio transcriptions for Capitol Records Transcription Service.[28][29] They performed on the radio programs Swing Soiree, Old Gold, The Chesterfield Supper Club, Kraft Music Hall, and The Orson Welles Almanac.[30][31]
On June 7, 1953, Cole performed for the ninth Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Chicago which was produced by Leon Hefflin, Sr.. Featured that day were Roy Brown and his Orchestra, Shorty Rogers, Earl Bostic, Don Tosti and His Mexican Jazzmen, and Louis Armstrong and his All Stars with Velma Middleton.[34][35]
On November 5, 1956, The Nat 'King' Cole Show debuted on NBC. The variety program was one of the first hosted by an African American.[36] The program started at a length of fifteen minutes but was increased to a half-hour in July 1957. Rheingold Beer was a regional sponsor, but a national sponsor was never found. The show was in trouble financially despite efforts by NBC, Harry Belafonte, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Eartha Kitt, Frankie Laine, Peggy Lee, and Mel Torm.[37] Cole decided to end the program. The last episode aired on December 17, 1957.[38] Commenting on the lack of sponsorship, Cole said shortly after its demise: "Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark."[39][40]
Throughout the 1950s, Cole continued to record hits that sold millions throughout the world, such as "Smile", "Pretend", "A Blossom Fell", and "If I May". His pop hits were collaborations with Nelson Riddle,[24] Gordon Jenkins, and Ralph Carmichael. Riddle arranged several of Cole's 1950s albums, including Nat King Cole Sings for Two in Love (1953), his first 10-inch LP. In 1955, "Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup" reached number 7 on the Billboard chart. Love Is the Thing went to number one in April 1957 and remained his only number one album.
After the change in musical tastes, Cole's ballads appealed little to young listeners, despite a successful attempt at rock and roll with "Send for Me",[24] which peaked at number 6 on the pop chart. Like Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Tony Bennett, Cole found that the pop chart had been taken over by youth-oriented acts.
In 1960, Cole's longtime collaborator Nelson Riddle left Capitol to join Reprise Records, which was established by Frank Sinatra. Riddle and Cole recorded one final hit album, Wild Is Love, with lyrics by Ray Rasch and Dotty Wayne. Cole later retooled the concept album into an Off-Broadway show, I'm with You.
Earlier on, Cole's shift to traditional pop led some jazz critics and fans to accuse him of selling out, but he never abandoned his jazz roots; as late as 1956, Cole recorded an all-jazz album, After Midnight, and many of his albums after this are fundamentally jazz-based, being scored for big band without strings, although the arrangements focus primarily on the vocal rather than instrumental leads.
Cole had one of his last major hits in 1963, two years before his death, with "Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer", which reached number 6 on the Pop chart. "Unforgettable" was made famous again in 1991 by Cole's daughter Natalie when modern recording technology was used to reunite father and daughter in a duet. The duet version rose to the top of the pop charts, almost forty years after its original popularity.[42]
Around the time Cole launched his singing career, he entered into Freemasonry. Cole was raised in January 1944 in the Thomas Waller Lodge No. 49 in California. The lodge was named after fellow Prince Hall mason and jazz musician Fats Waller.[43][44] Cole joined the Scottish Rite Freemasonry,[45] becoming a 32nd Degree Mason.[46]
Cole was "an avid baseball fan", particularly of Hank Aaron. In 1968, Nelson Riddle related an incident from some years earlier and told of music studio engineers, searching for a source of noise, finding Cole listening to a game on a transistor radio.[24]
Cole met his first wife, Nadine Robinson, while they were on tour for the all-black Broadway musical Shuffle Along. Cole was 18 when they married and she was the reason why he moved to Los Angeles and formed the Nat King Cole trio.[47] Their marriage ended in divorce in 1948.[48]
In August 1948, Cole purchased a house from Col. Harry Gantz, the ex-husband of silent film actress Lois Weber, in the all-white Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Shortly thereafter, a burning cross was placed on his front lawn and the property-owners association told Cole they did not want any "undesirables" moving into the neighborhood. Cole responded, "Neither do I. And if I see anybody undesirable coming in here, I'll be the first to complain."[51] His dog died after eating poisoned meat, something likely to be connected to his moving to the neighborhood.[52]
In 1956, Cole was contracted to perform in Cuba. He wanted to stay at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana but was refused because it operated a color bar. Cole honored his contract, and the concert at the Tropicana Club was a huge success. The following year, Cole returned to Cuba for another concert, singing many songs in Spanish.
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