Natalie Cole

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Natalie Cole
Born February 6, 1950

Natalie Cole (born Stephanie Natalie Maria Cole on February 6, 1950), is a Grammy Award-winning American singer and songwriter.

Contents

[edit] Personal life

Natalie Cole is the daughter of noted crooner Nat King Cole. In several interviews, Cole talked about her upbringing; she was raised in an affluent area of Los Angeles, and her family, which she has referred to as "the black Kennedys", lived just a few doors down from the California governor. [1] Cole also stated in an interview that she did not connect with her cultural heritage or "blackness" until she attended college. [2]. She was 15 years old when her famous father died of cancer.

She attended the Northfield Mount Hermon School in Northfield, MA. In her childhood, she was exposed to the greats of jazz, soul and blues at an early age, and she began performing at the age of 11.

Cole has been married three times, and has a son, Robert Yancy, (by Marvin Yancy), born in 1977; her son is a musician who tours with her. She later married former Rufus drummer Andre Fischer, who co-produced her album Unforgettable... With Love.

[edit] Music career

[edit] Early career

Her debut album in 1975, Inseparable, resulted in chart success with the single "This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)" (#1 R&B, #6 Pop). Her performance of the song won her a 1975 Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female, a category that had heretofore been monopolized by Aretha Franklin. She also was awarded the Best New Artist Grammy of 1975.

More hits followed through 1980, including her biggest Pop hit, 1977's "I've Got Love On My Mind," as well as "Sophisticated Lady (She's A Different Lady)" (1976), "Our Love" (1978), and "Someone That I Used To Love" (1980). "I've Got Love On My Mind" and "Our Love" both earned certifications as Gold singles.

[edit] Career detour and resurgence

Cole's career paused in the early 1980s as she dealt with the challenges of her severe drug problem. By 1985, Cole was back in good health, and began a comeback.

Her first step was with the album Dangerous, released on the Modern label. In 1987, she released Everlasting (on EMI Manhattan) which sold over 2 million copies in the U.S., and won Cole a Soul Train Award for Female Single of the Year for the #1 R&B ballad "I Live for Your Love". The album garnered her three major hit singles: "Jump Start," "I Live For Your Love" (#2 AC and #13 Pop as well as #1 R&B), and a successful remake of Bruce Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac" (#5 Pop, #16 AC, and #1 Dance). The album also included a remake of one of her father's signature hits, "When I Fall In Love," which did moderately well on the AC chart.

In 1989, another album, Good To Be Back gave her another chart success "Miss You Like Crazy" (#1 both R&B and AC, and #7 Pop).

[edit] "Unforgettable...with Love"

Cole may be best remembered for her 1991 album, Unforgettable... with Love, featuring her own arrangements of her father's greatest hits. Ironically, during her early career, Cole was reluctant to capitalize on her father's name, and wanted to forge her own identity by going after the soul market in earnest. For many years, she also found the prospect of recording her late father's songs too painful on a personal level.

Her decision to record the songs was a chart success; the album sold over 5 million copies in the United States alone, and won Cole several Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance. The album featured a duet, the title track, with her father, created by splicing a recording of his vocals into the track. As a single, it reached #14 on Billboard Magazine's Hot 100 chart, and went gold.

[edit] Additional albums

Cole has released several more albums of pop standards in the years since; as a result of appealing to the "adult standards" audience, she has made only occasional forays onto the pop singles charts in that time (for example, "A Smile Like Yours" in 1997), although her albums still sell well. Natalie Cole is considered one of the core artists of the smooth jazz format, garnering frequent airplay on smooth jazz radio stations with both her classic songs and her newer material.

Her 1999 album Snowfall On The Sahara marked a return to the easy adult-contemporary soul that categorized her late-1980s hits, but for 2002's critically-praised Ask A Woman Who Knows, she turned more to the jazz side of the spectrum, covering songs made famous by Dinah Washington, Nina Simone, and Sarah Vaughan.

In September 2006, she released "Leavin'", a cover album of tracks made popular by Shelby Lynne, Kate Bush, Sting, and Fiona Apple, among others; the album is a hybrid of rock, pop music, and R&B.

[edit] Television and film

Cole has carved out a secondary career in acting. She has also appeared several times in live concerts or other music related programs. After Johnny Mathis appeared on a special of Cole's in 1980, the two kept in contact, and in 1992, he invited Natalie to be a part of his television special titled "A Tribute To Nat Cole" for BBC-TV in England. It had high viewer ratings and was successful. From that project, an album with the same name was released, and featured several medley and solo numbers.

Cole has made a number of dramatic appearances on television, including guest appearances on I'll Fly Away, Touched by an Angel, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In 2006, she made a memorable guest appearance on the popular ABC show Grey's Anatomy as a terminally ill patient. Her character visited Seattle Grace Hospital to have a fork removed from her neck that her husband had stabbed her with during a mishap; the couple had been having an intimate encounter in public. [3]

Cole has also made several appearances in feature films, most recently in the Cole Porter biopic De-Lovely. She has appeared in several made-for-TV movies, most notably as the lead in "Lily in Winter".

On December 2, 2006, Natalie Cole performed for the first time in Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands as part of the annual Cayman Jazz Fest (http://www.caymanislands.ky/jazzfest/).

[edit] Substance abuse and recovery

In 2000, Cole released an autobiography, Angel on my Shoulder, which described her battle with drugs during much of her life.

  • In the book, Cole admitted to using LSD, heroin and crack cocaine.
  • Cole said she began experimenting with drugs while attending the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
  • She also disclosed that she was arrested in Toronto, Canada for possession of heroin in 1975.
  • Cole continued to spiral out of control - including one incident where she refused to evacuate a burning building, and another where her young son Robert nearly drowned in the family swimming pool while she and her first husband, the late Reverend Marvin Yancy, were on a drug binge. [4] She did eventually enter rehab in 1983. [5]

In concert with the release of the book, her autobiography was turned into a made-for-TV movie, The Natalie Cole Story, which aired December 10, 2000 on NBC.

[edit] Discography

  • 1975 Inseparable #18 US Pop Gold
  • 1976 Natalie #7 US R&B/#13 US Pop: Gold
  • 1977 Thankful #15 US R&B/#16 US Pop: Platinum
  • 1977 Unpredictable #1 R&B/ #8 pop Platinum
  • 1978 Natalie Live! #31 US Pop: Gold
  • 1979 I Love You So #9 US R&B/#52 US Pop
  • 1979 We're the Best of Friends (w/ Peabo Bryson) #44 US Pop
  • 1980 Don't Look Back #22 US R&B/#77 US Pop
  • 1981 Happy Love #13 US R&B/#132 US Pop
  • 1983 I'm Ready #6 US R&B/#182 US Pop
  • 1985 Dangerous #9 US R&B/#140 US Pop
  • 1987 Everlasting #5 US R&B/#42 US Pop: 4x Platinum UK: #62
  • 1989 Good to Be Back #4 US R&B/#59 US Pop: 3x Platinum UK: #10
  • 1991 Unforgettable... with Love #1 (5 weeks) US: 7x Platinum UK: #11
  • 1993 Take a Look #3 US R&B/#26 US Pop: 4x Platinum UK: #16
  • 1994 Holly & Ivy #36 US Pop: Gold
  • 1995 A Celebration of Christmas (w/ José Carreras and Plácido Domingo) #196 US Pop
  • 1997 Stardust #20 US Pop
  • 1998 Christmas with You
  • 1999 Snowfall on the Sahara
  • 1999 The Magic of Christmas
  • 2000 Greatest Hits: Vol. 1
  • 2002 Ask a Woman Who Knows #32 US Pop
  • 2006 Leavin' #97 US Pop

[edit] Selected Singles

  • 1975: "This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)" - US R&B #1, Pop #6, AC #45 / UK: #32
  • 1976: "Inseparable" - US R&B #1, Pop #32, AC #20
  • 1976: "Sophisticated Lady (She's A Different Lady)" - US R&B #1, Pop #25
  • 1976: "Mr. Melody" - US R&B #1, Pop #49, AC #25
  • 1977: "I've Got Love On My Mind" - US R&B #1, Pop #5, AC #45 <Gold>
  • 1977: "Party Lights" - US R&B #8, Pop #79
  • 1978: "Our Love" - US R&B #1, Pop #10, AC #33 <Gold>
  • 1980: "Someone That I Used To Love" - US Pop #21, AC #3
  • 1985: "Dangerous" - US Pop #57
  • 1985: "A Little Bit Of Heaven" - US Pop #81, AC #11
  • 1987: "Jump Start" - US Pop #13 / UK #44 (original issue), UK #36 (1988 re-issue)
  • 1987: "Over You" (w/Ray Parker Jr.) - US AC #38 / UK #65
  • 1988: "I Live For Your Love" - US R&B #1, Pop #13, AC #2 / UK #86, UK #23 (1989 re-issue)
  • 1988: "Pink Cadillac" - US Pop #5, AC #16 / UK #5 - originally the flip side to Bruce Springsteen's 1984 #2 US hit, "Dancing In The Dark".
  • 1988: "When I Fall In Love" - US Pop #95, AC #14
  • 1988: "Everlasting" - UK #28
  • 1989: "Miss You Like Crazy" - US R&B #1, Pop #7, AC #1 / UK #2
  • 1989: "Rest Of The Night" - UK #56
  • 1989: "I Do" (w/Freddie Jackson) - US AC #15
  • 1989: "Starting Over Again" - US AC #5 / UK #56
  • 1990: "Wild Women Do" - US Pop #34 / UK #16
  • 1990: "Grown-Up Christmas List" (w/David Foster)
  • 1991: "Unforgettable" (w/Nat King Cole) - US Pop #14, AC #3 <Gold> / UK #19
  • 1991: "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)" - US AC #22
  • 1992: "The Very Thought Of You" - US AC #34 / UK #71
  • 1993: "Take A Look" - US AC #35
  • 1997: "A Smile Like Yours" - US Pop #84, AC #8
  • 1999: "Snowfall On The Sahara" - US AC #25
  • 2000: "Angel On My Shoulder" - US AC #14
  • 2002: "Tell Me All About It"
  • 2002: "Better Than Anything" (w/Diana Krall)
  • 2006: "Daydreaming" - US R&B #77

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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