‘Unforgettable’ singer Natalie Cole dies, aged 65

Cole, the daughter of jazz legend Nat “King”… She was attending boarding school in MA when he died of lung cancer in 1965. While she initially didn’t intend to pursue music, she began singing and performing after college, choosing rock and R&B material over her father’s jazz standards. Franklin, perhaps intimidated by the upstart competition, at one point famously gave Cole the brush-off. Natalie followed her legendary father into the music business with magnificent hits like “Inseparable”, “This Will Be” and “Unforgettable”, achieving multiplatinum, worldwide success in her own right.

“Unforgettable”, his daughter responds in the modern-day studio.

Her album, “Unforgettable… With Love”, won the Grammy for Album of the Year and has sold more than seven million copies in the United States.

“Our parish really rallied around her, supporting her through prayer”, he said, during Cole’s illness and 2009 transplant.

While making the album, Cole told The Associated Press in 1991, she had to “throw out every R&B lick that I had ever learned and every pop trick I had ever learned”. I had to hold back the tears. In a tweet, actress Marlee Matlin called Cole a lovely songbird and a great actress, writing “she is now singing in heaven”.

According to IMDb, the songstress was born in Los Angeles, on February 6, 1950 to Nathaniel (Nat) and Maria Cole.

Cole came to perform in 2007 and in 2009, as part of a celebrity concert series coordinated by the church. A decade after losing her father, Nat’s little girl had been catapulted into the center of late 70s stardom. It featured a duet (‘Unforgettable’) with her father. When he heard her sing a Fitzgerald number, he was said to have exclaimed, “By gosh, you’ve got it!”

“Her sumptuous, buttery, vocals are the kind of rare treasure that needs only the twinkling of a piano, the snapping of fingers, and the thump-thump-thump of a stand-up bass”.

She received a bachelor’s degree in child psychology from the University of MA at Amherst in 1972, but many of her early jobs were in music. We were blessed with her awesome talent and her presence.

The following year she walked away with her second for the song Sophisticated Lady. But her life was marred by personal woes including drug use and three divorces. Yes, I could have handled some things better.

Cole has suffered through a substantial amount of health problems. Seeing her then makes it hard to reconcile that she’s now gone.

Singer Jordin Sparks wrote: ‘Rest in everlasting love.

Hits and awards kept pouring in as Cole released two more platinum albums (Unpredictable and Thankful, both in 1977). Later in her career, Cole also tried her hand at acting on programs like Touched by an Angel, Law & Order: SVU and Gray’s Anatomy.

She made one hell of a life for herself and never felt shame or sorrow for her sometimes-harrowing journey.

She also had a liver transplant due to liver disease.