Artists Respond To News Of Death Of Natalie Cole

The Grammy-winning singer, who had longstanding health issues including complications from a kidney transplant, died on New Year’s Eve at a Los Angeles hospital.

Cole, who died Thursday night at age 65, seemed to step it up when others joined her, though, reveling in whichever voice she entangled with hers. In 2007, Cole was diagnosed with hepatitis C, which doctors said she likely contracted years earlier when she injected heroin.

Her final Grammy came in 2009 for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for Still Unforgettable. In a technical feat considered novel in the day, Cole sang the title track – with its elegant, string- backed opening line “Unforgettable, that’s what you are” – in a duet with her father.

Cole won the first of nine Grammy Awards in 1975, 10 years after her father’s death.

Natalie Cole, the Grammy award-winning American singer known for R&B hits like “This Will Be” and “Our Love”, has passed away aged 65.

“Somewhere up in Heaven, there’s got to be an exclusive club”, he says, “where Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee and Nat King Cole are welcoming Natalie right now with open arms”.

By the time Natalie Cole was 11, she was performing alongside her father on his TV show.

This multitalented woman dabbled in film, television, as well as music and didn’t allow her father’s shadow to define who she was or what she wanted to achieve in her career.

The “Unforgettable” duet kicked off a veritable sub-genre of albums pairing such elder statesmen of classic pop as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett with a wide range of contemporary vocalists from rock, soul and even country music. She graciously performed at my 50th Anniversary tribute in Lincoln Center back in 2007.

She began as an R&B singer but later gravitated toward the smooth pop and jazz standards that her father loved.

Cole was set to make her Broadway debut in 2014 as a guest star in Warren Carlyle’s After Midnight, following in the footsteps of Fantasia Barrino, Vanessa Williams, and Patti LaBelle, from August 5-31. Her last album was released in 2013 with “Natalie Cole en Espanol”.

During her career, Cole established herself as a superstar on the level of her famous father, earning hits with “This Will Be”, “Inseparable” and “Our Love”.

Natalie’s mother was the late singer Maria Hawkins Cole. “I’m not like that”, she told The Los Angeles Times in 1985.

But for all of Cole’s successes, her life was also marked by years of serious health problems. She married Yancy in 1976, the first of three marriages.

“I was determined to create my own identity”, she wrote in her 2010 memoir “Love Brought Me Back”. Nonetheless, fans will always have the music she gave them.

In a 2008 interview with The Times, she spoke about an illness that caused fluid-filled lungs and rapidly deteriorating kidneys.

“We will miss her like insane”.