Natalie Cole has died, aged 65

Daughter of Legendary jazz pianist, Nat King Cole and a celebrated singer herself, Natalie Cole dies at the age of 65 on a sad morning of Friday.

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”. In 2015, she had cancelled appearances citing medical reasons. “Natalie fought a fierce, courageous battle, dying how she lived – with dignity, strength and honour. Our beloved Mother and sister will be greatly missed and remain UNFORGETTABLE in our hearts forever”, read the statement from her son Robert Yancy and sisters Timolin and Casey Cole.

Nat “King” Cole died of lung cancer in 1965. May her soul rest in peace.

Tony Bennett has led the tributes to iconic singer Natalie Cole, who died on Thursday (31Dec15) aged 65. “With Love” spent five weeks at No. 1 on the pop charts, sold more than 14 million copies worldwide and won six Grammy Awards.

As her career progressed, Cole began to drift away from the pop and R&B styles that had defined her early music and gravitated toward a more jazz-oriented style that drew from the likes of Ella Fitzgerald-and her own father. With Love, featured a technology-assisted duet for the song Unforgettable with her father’s original recording. The song won her the Best New Artist Grammy in 1975, the first of nine she would win throughout her career.

Her other hits included “Everlasting”, “Sophisticated Lady”, “I’ve Got love on My Mind”, and “Good to Be Back”.

When recording the album, which won two Grammys, Cole was found during a routine blood test to have Hepatitis C – a liver virus that she presumably contracted as a result of her past drug use.

The success of “Unforgettable” capped her comeback after a dark period of heroin, crack and alcohol abuse. 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.

Cole late in her life pursued a career in acting, appearing in several prime-time United States series.

Natalie Cole had battled drug problems and hepatitis that forced her to undergo a kidney transplant in May 2009. As a young woman, she had listened to Franklin and Janis Joplin and for years was reluctant to perform her father’s material. Her most recent work was 2013’s “Natalie Cole en Espanol”. But she went to the University of MA in Amherst with no plans of an entertainment career.

Cole’s mother, Maria Cole, also had been a singer with the Duke Ellington and Count Basie bands.

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”.

Singer Patti LaBelle tweeted “Sending prayers and condolences to all the loved ones of my friend #NatalieCole!” She was a dear friend of ours; Shawn & I will miss her terribly.

Singer Lenny Kravitz posted on Instagram: “As the new year was ushered in, an angelic instrument moved on”.