🚨Nat King Cole Is Dead

Feb. 15, 1965 - Nat King Cole, the velvet-voiced popular singer, died in St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, Calif., this morning. He was 45 years old.

Cole entered the hospital on Dec. 8 with a lung condition that was later disclosed to be cancer. After receiving cobalt treatments, his left lung was removed in an operation on Jan. 25.

Hospital reports indicated a strong recovery until late last week, when his condition suddenly worsened. Cole’s wife of 17 years, Maria, was at his bedside at his death.

During his illness, 500,000 letters and postcards addressed to him deluged the hospital. His visitors included Doris Duke, Jack Benny, Frank Sinatra, and many show business personalities. 

In an interview last week, Cole, who was a heavy cigarette smoker, said he had been “greatly inspired” by the mail and by the visits of family and friends. With a minimum of theatrics and an ease of style, Cole became one of the leading Negro entertainers in the nation and one of the most durable figures in American popular music. Commenting on his rise from a $26.50-a-week piano-playing member of a trio to a singer who made as much as $10,000 a week, he said: “Wild! It makes you a believer in those cornball movies.”

His recordings of such songs as “Nature Boy,” “Mona Lisa,” “Too Young,” “Unforgettable,” and “Rambling Rose” sold 50 million copies, and in a business keyed to an ever-changing public taste, he remained on top for almost a quarter of a century.

Cole, a tall, slender man, achieved his success with a voice of slight range that he used in a distinctive manner.

“He’s one of the two guys who took a style and made a voice of it,” Billy Eckstine, the singer, once said. “The other is Louis Armstrong.”

According to Cole, his range was less than two octaves.

“It’s nothing to be proud of,” he said. “I guess it’s the hoarse, breathy noise that some like.”

Cole was a life member of the NAACP and made large donations to several civil rights organizations.

On his position as a Negro in show business, he made this observation: “I don’t allow myself to be exploited in any way. Being of a minority and a performer, I’m careful that what I do and say isn’t taken and twisted.”

On April 10, 1956, Cole was appearing at the Municipal Auditorium in Birmingham, Ala., when six white men rushed on the stage and attacked him. He was unhurt except for a slight back injury. He canceled an Atlanta appearance, saying he wouldn’t sing in the South ‘for a million dollars.” The Alabama-born singer never returned to Birmingham.Cole broke new ground for Negroes in several areas of popular entertainment. He was the first Negro singer of romantic ballads to acquire a mass following comparable to those of Frank Sinatra and Perry Como. HIs group, the King Cole Trio, was the first Negro jazz unit to have its own sponsored network radio series. In 1956, Cole became the first Negro to have his own weekly series on network television.

The series was carried for a year by NBC. Although Cole had many of the leading entertainers in show business as guests, the program never acquired a national sponsor. Cole gave up the series.

Besides his wife, the singer leaves a son, Nat Kelly, and four daughters, Carol, Natalie, and twins Casey and Timolin. Carol and Nat Kelly were adopted.

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