EURweb Remembers Legendary Singer Natalie Cole

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

“Natalie fought a fierce, courageous battle, dying how she lived… with dignity, strength and honor”, read a statement from her son, Robert Yancy, and sisters, Timolin and Casey Cole. “May her soul rest in peace”, tweeted the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

‘Natalie was an exceptional jazz singer and it was an honour to have recorded and performed with her on several occasions. In 1975, she had a massive hit with “This Will Be” from her album “Inseparable”, which showed off her tremendous pipes – she earned comparisons to Aretha Franklin – and command of a range of styles.

Mariah Carey says she is “beyond devastated” to hear about the passing of fellow R&B soul artist Natalie Cole.

Cole maintained her recording and performing career, most recently recording an album in Spanish, “Natalie Cole in Español”. Her best-known album to date, Unforgettable… Complications with Hepatitis C affected her kidneys, which she attributed to well-documented drug abuse earlier in her life. The hepatitis led to the need for a kidney transplant back in May 2009, as well as having to undergo chemotherapy.

Cole toured through much of her illness, often receiving dialysis at hospitals around the globe. Like Natalie Cole after her, Wilson moved freely and adeptly between jazz, R&B and gospel, creating a seamless fusion approach all her own.

At the time of her death, Ms. Cole had four concerts on the east coast already scheduled for 2016. Her final Grammy Award came in 2008 for “Still Unforgettable”, selected as the best traditional pop vocal album. The cause of death was reportedly congestive heart failure. One of the best songs on the album features Cole singing a digital duet with her father to the tune of “Unforgettable”.

The recording featured many of Nat “King” Cole’s most famous songs, including “Mona Lisa”, “Too Young”, “Route 66” and “Unforgettable”, in which Ms. Cole’s voice was spliced with her father’s to make a poignant posthumous duet. Nat King Cole died in 1965, when she was 15, a loss that “crushed” her, she said. Her sister died the morning Cole got a successful kidney transplant in May 2009. In her 2000 autobiography, Angel on my Shoulder, she wrote that her addiction incapacitated her so severely that she was barely able to escape a fire in her Las Vegas hotel in 1981. Sinatra and Bennett, along with Cole’s father, are among the very few who share that distinction. Cole performed at the Highland Park venue five times over the years, beginning in 1993.

Cole had a light, supple, perpetually optimistic voice, full of syncopated turns and airborne swoops, drawing on both the nuances of jazz singing and the dynamics of gospel.

Cole, who received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, wrote a pair of memoirs and starred in a 2001 made-for-TV movie “Livin’ For Love: The Natalie Cole Story”.