Natalie Cole dead at 65

Singer Natalie Cole, the daughter of jazz legend Nat “King” Cole who overcame substance abuse to find success in her own right, has died at age 65, her family said Friday.

The family’s statement said Cole died Thursday night at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles from “ongoing health issues”.

“It is with heavy hearts that we bring to you all the news of our Mother and sister’s passing”.

She is survived by her son.

Natalie Cole’s sister has recalled the singer’s final days, saying she is now “at peace”. FILE – In a Saturday, Oct. 11, 2014 file photo, Motown Records founder Berry Gordy, left, embraces singer Natalie Cole at the 2014 Carousel of Hope Ball at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, in Beverly Hills, Calif….

She released her first album Inseparable in 1975 and skyrocketed to fame. Critics compared her to Diana Ross and Aretha Franklin but her career floundered in the 1980s when she ran into problems with heroin.

Following graduation, Cole began singing rock and R&B covers at clubs with her band, Black Magic. Cole performed a seamless duet with her late father’s voice on the title tune, one of his signature songs.

But it was 1991’s “Unforgettable…With Love” that elevated Natalie Cole’s name to something close to epochal stature. Her crowning achievement, however, was Unforgettable…

Whatever life threw at Natalie Cole, she kept coming back. It was just a month after she had resumed performing. She revealed in 2008 that she had been diagnosed with hepatitis C, the result of drug use in the 1970s and ’80s, and her kidneys had failed after treatment. Cole recently canceled several performances because of illness.

This symbiosis of talents reached a technical and emotional peak with an engineered “duet” of father and daughter on “Unforgettable”, which led older and younger generations of record buyers to take the album rapidly into platinum-sales status. “I’m not like that”, she told The Los Angeles Times in 1985. She rode its success to a long and fruitful career in jazz, and kept taking risks along the way – singing for hundreds of millions at the Super Bowl and Oscars, singing with Andrea Bocelli and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, recording an album in Spanish, acting on TV and in films. She was beloved by many fans and followers, and was doing her best to carry on her father’s legacy. She attended Northfield School and went on to college at University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she majored in child psychology and minored in German.