Nat King Cole

Unforgettable.

That’s how millions of music fans worldwide still remember Nat King Cole decades after his death. Cole was the velvet voice, baritone crooner known for his classic songs such as “Mona Lisa,” “Ramblin’ Rose,” “Those Lazy Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer,” “Dear Lonely Hearts” and “Nature Boy.”

But Cole was equally known for acting, having appeared in nearly 30 movies and making guest appearances on more than 20 television shows. He was also the first African American to host a national television variety show when the “Nat King Cole Show” debuted in 1956.

Tall, suave and always stylish, Cole was one of show business’s biggest entertainers in the 1950s and 1960s, leading a jet-set life and associating with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin, and performing with heavy-hitters such as Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald.

“Nat Cole was a man who gave so much and still had so much to give,” said comedian Jack Benny, one of Cole’s close friends.

Undesirable people

Despite his popularity among both blacks and whites, Cole faced racism when not performing. Soon after Cole and his wife bought a house in an exclusive section of California in 1948, he was told by an attorney for neighboring property owners that they didn’t want “undesirable people” moving to the community. Cole smiled and replied: “Neither do I. And if I see anybody undesirable coming into this neighborhood, I’ll be the first to complain.”

Born Nathaniel Adams Coles (he dropped the “s” from his last name early in his career) in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1919, Cole’s introduction to music came as a child in the Baptist church as he accompanied his mother to numerous weekly choir rehearsals, in which she was director. His father was church pastor.

His family moved to Chicago in the early 1920s, and soon afterward Cole began to play the piano. Inspired by pianist Earl Hines, Cole took formal piano lessons in his teens and later dropped out of school to play the jazz piano full time. He later began singing, something, he said, that “just came naturally.”

In 1936, while on tour with the King Cole Trio in Los Angeles, a club owner jokingly referred to him as “Old King Cole” from the nursery rhyme. Cole liked the moniker and soon began referring to himself as Nat King Cole.

One of Cole’s biggest hits came in 1991, when his daughter, Natalie Cole, recorded a duet with her late father, adding her vocals to his classic “Unforgettable.” The father-daughter duet won seven Grammy awards. In 1990, Cole received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He sold more than 50 million records during his career.

Cole died in 1965 in Santa Monica, California, from lung cancer at age 45.