Grammy winner Natalie Cole dead at age 65

NEW YORK, United States-Singer Natalie Cole, the daughter of jazz legend Nat “King” Cole who overcame substance abuse to find stardom in her own right, has died, her family said Friday. “With Love.” The album contained songs associated with her father, the silky-voiced baritone who was one of the most popular performers of the 1940s and ’50s but died before his daughter began her solo career.

Natalie was born and raised in Los Angeles where she was exposed early to numerous great singers of the time not only through their music but in person through her father, Nat, and mother Maria Hawkins who was a former singer with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

“Unforgettable” the single earned Grammy awards for song and record of the year, and her album “Unforgettable…”

In a 2000 autobiography, “Angel on My Shoulder”, Cole related how she struggled with depression, most painfully after the death of her father and the near-drowning of her son in a swimming pool.

But for all of Cole’s successes, her life was also marked by years of serious health problems. She was beloved by many fans and followers, and was doing her best to carry on her father’s legacy.

The last of Cole’s nine Grammys came with her 2008 standards collection Still Unforgettable. The twins, who live in Boca Raton, run the Nat King Cole Generation Hope Foundation to support music education. “I’m a fighter, not a chump”, she said. She loved performing live and continued performing through her illness, often undergoing dialysis three times a day while on tour.

Natalie Cole poses backstage after winning Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for “Still Unforgettable” at the 51st annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, in this file picture taken February 8, 2009.

Natalie was well known for hits including This Will Be and a cover of Unforgettable with her father. For Cole, the titular catching of said hell was far from fictional: As she turned to drugs, her career fell into a slump for much of the ’80s.

She received a directed donation of a kidney from a deceased donor in May 2009.

“It’s heartbreaking, she’s fought a very long battle and she’s at peace now”, Casey said.

She was married to Marvin Yancy, producer of the 1970s R&B group, The Independents; Andre Fischer, a drummer for the band Rufus and Kenneth Dupree a bishop with the Baptist church, and they divorced in 2004.

Her career was inextricably linked to that of her father.