According to legend, his career as a vocalist started when a drunken bar patron demanded that he sing the song. Ĭole recorded " Sweet Lorraine" in 1940, and it became his first hit. They changed their name to the King Cole Trio before making radio transcriptions and recording for small labels. They called themselves the King Cole Swingsters after the nursery rhyme in which " Old King Cole was a merry old soul". When a club owner asked him to form a band, he hired bassist Wesley Prince and guitarist Oscar Moore. He led a big band and found work playing piano in nightclubs. After the show ended in Los Angeles, Cole and Nadine settled there while he looked for work. In 1937, he married Nadine Robinson, who was a member of the cast. They performed in a revival of the musical Shuffle Along.
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. When he was 15, Cole dropped out of high school to pursue a music career. Nat King Cole, Paramount Theater, New York City, November 1946 He would sneak out of the house to visit clubs, sitting outside to hear Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, and Jimmie Noone. He participated in Walter Dyett's music program at DuSable High School. The Cole family moved to the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, where he attended Wendell Phillips Academy High School, the school Sam Cooke attended a few years later. As a youth, he joined the news delivery boys' " Bud Billiken Club" band for The Chicago Defender.
He began formal piano lessons at 12, learning jazz, gospel, and classical music "from Johann Sebastian Bach to Sergei Rachmaninoff". His first performance was " Yes! We Have No Bananas" at the age of four. Ĭole learned to play the organ from his mother, Perlina Coles, the church organist. When Cole was four years old, the family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where his father, Edward Coles, became a Baptist minister. Each of the Coles brothers pursued careers in music. Nathaniel Adams Coles was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 17, 1919. He was the father of singer Natalie Cole (1950–2015), who covered her father's songs in the 1991 album Unforgettable. He is known for his Christmas album The Magic of Christmas (1960) which included " The Christmas Song" in 1999 it was named by Rolling Stone as one of the greatest Christmas albums of all time. Some of his most notable singles include " Unforgettable", " Smile", " L-O-V-E", " 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".
#Cole rhythm doctor series#
From 1956 to 1957, he hosted the NBC variety series The Nat King Cole Show, which became the first nationally broadcast television show hosted by an African American. He regularly performed for civil rights organizations.
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. Despite achieving mainstream success, during his career he faced intense racial discrimination. Starting in 1950 he transitioned to become a solo singer billed as Nat King Cole. His trio was the model for small jazz ensembles that followed. 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 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2000), and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame (2020).Ĭole started his career as a jazz pianist in the late 1930s, where he formed The King Cole Trio which became the top-selling group (and the only black act) on Capitol Records in the 1940s.
He received numerous accolades including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1960) and a Special Achievement Golden Globe Award. Cole's career as a jazz and pop vocalist started in the late 1930s and spanned almost three decades where he found success and recorded over 100 songs that became hits on the pop charts. Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American singer, jazz pianist, and actor.
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