Natalie Cole, the Grammy-winning singer who had hits with such songs as “This Will Be” and “Our Love” and recorded “Unforgettable … With Love,” a best-selling album of songs made famous by her late father, Nat King Cole, died Thursday evening (Dec 31).
She was 65. Born in 1950, Cole grew up among musical royalty. Her father was one of the most accomplished singers and jazz musicians of the postwar era, and her mother, Maria Hawkins Cole, was a singer for Duke Ellington.
After college in Massachusetts, Cole embarked on her own career in the 70s. But failing sales and personal problems sidetracked Cole’s career. It was then that she started doing heroin followed by cocaine she told the Houston Chronicle. Her mother even filed for conservatorship in 1982.
A rehab stint in 1983 turned her life around, she said.
“Somehow, at some point halfway through those 30 days, I went from not wanting to be there to being afraid to leave. I was starting to get it,” she said.
Cole began a comeback in the late ’80s that was capped by 1991’s “Unforgettable … With Love,” an album that — thanks to the wonder of technology — included a duet with her father on one of his biggest hits, “Unforgettable.”
But for all of Cole’s successes, her life was also marked by years of serious health problems.
She underwent a kidney transplant in May 2009 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She had revealed in 2008 that she had been diagnosed with hepatitis C and her kidneys had failed after she went through treatment.
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