Singer Natalie Cole dies

“That was really my thank you”, she told People magazine in 2006, according to the Associated Press. “You can go through turbulent times and still have victory in your life”.

Cole suffered a series of health issues recently and died Thursday night at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, her family confirmed.

Cole is survived by her son, Robert Yancy, as well as two sisters, Timolin Cole and Casey Cole.

Natalie Cole, who died this week in Los Angeles after an illness.

Taking advantage of her musical pedigree, Natalie Cole began her career as most popular singers do, by appearing in small, out-of-the-way clubs as soloist for Black Magic, the band she headed up.

On Instagram Tony Bennett shared a picture of himself with Cole writing: ‘I am deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Natalie Cole, as I have cherished the long friendship I had with her, her father Nat, and the family over the years. By age 11, she was performing alongside him on his television show.

Natalie Cole with her dad Nat King Cole in 1960.

The music world lost a lovely voice in Natalie Cole, whose death was revealed in the first hours of 2016.

The song was a hit for Nat King Cole in 1951. Yet she was about to find her own voice.

In her autobiography, Cole narrated how she struggled with depression, most painfully after the death of her father and the near-drowning of her son in a swimming pool.

A file picture taken on February 8, 2009, shows singer Natalie Cole with the Grammy award for the Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for “Still Unforgettable”.

She was first nominated for numerous Grammy Awards in 1976 and has been a constant contestant for the honour over the years. However, she did not have her father around to help guide her music career when she got older. She did not just battle being a minority in media, which is hard enough, but a longtime addiction to drugs.

Cole’s final album, in 2008, was entitled “Still Unforgettable” and expanded on the theme of her 1991 work by adapting classic American tunes in addition to those of her father. It featured reworked versions of some of her father’s best-known songs. Cole received dialysis three times a week, but continued to perform.

We sat next to each other in one of the many hidden majlises at Emirates Palace reserved for VIP guests – it was in early April, a few days before her Abu Dhabi Festival closing performance at the venue’s main auditorium.

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.

She underwent a kidney transplant in 2009, which inspired her second book.