Nat King Cole

Nathaniel Adams Coles , better known as Nat King Cole ( Alabama , 17 of March of 1919 – California , 15 of February of 1965 ) was a pianist and singer of jazz , swing and pop .

Summary

[ hide ]

• 1 Biographical synthesis
  • 1 The “King Cole Trio”
  • 2 Career as a singer
  • 3 Death
• 2 Nat King Cole in Spanish
• 3 Fun facts
• 4 Partial Discography
• 5 See also
• 6 Sources

Biographical synthesis

He was born in Montgomery , Alabama on March 17 , 1919 , but his childhood was spent in Chicago . His father, Edward Coles, was a butcher and deacon in the Baptist Church , a Protestant pastor who was posted in 1921 to a Chicago parish. There his mother, Perlina Adams, led the church choir and Cole grew up and was educated beginning as a child to sing and play the organ in religious services, belonging to a church taught him a lot about gospel music.

The star’s family lived in a neighborhood famous for its nightlife and its jazz clubs. This motivated Nat to join jazz after listening to artists like Louis Armstrong or Earl Hines , who became his admired musician.

Inspired by Hines, Nat began his artistic career in the mid-1930s while still a teenager. He adopted the name Nat Cole, dropping the “s” from his family name. His older brother, Eddie, a bassist, joined Nat’s band when Nat made his first recording in 1936 . They had some success as a local band in Chicago and became regulars on the club stage. In fact, the nickname of “King” (king) was given to Nat in one of these places. Cole also participated as a pianist on a tour with Eubie Blake . When the tour reached Long Beach , California , Nat decided to settle there.

The “King Cole Trio”

The King Cole Trio

It was in the 1930s, when he began his artistic career with his brother and they recorded their first demo in 1936; he married Nadine Robinson and moved to Los Angeles but it was really a year later that King Cole took music more professionally and formed the “King Cole Trio”, Nat on piano with Oscar Moore on guitar and Wesley Prince on Low. After a hard work of promotion by different bars and nightclubs, the new band signs a contract with the record company “Capitol Records” and manages to reach the public with their song “Sweet Lorraine” in 1940 . The trio performed in Los Angeles since the late 1930s and also appeared on numerous radio shows.

Cole was considered a brilliant jazz pianist. It appeared, for example, in the first concerts of “Jazz at the Philharmonic” JATP . A group composed solely of Piano , Guitar and Bass in the era of the great bands meant a true revolution and imposed a style that would later be imitated by other jazz and blues greats such as Charles Brown and Ray Charles . Cole also acted like accompanist pianist of artists of the category of Lionel Hampton .

In the early 1940s, the “King Cole Trio” signed a contract with the record company “Capitol Records” with which he continued for the rest of his career. In the 1950s, Cole’s popularity was so great that the “Capitol Records” building was known as “the house that Nat built.”

Singing career

The 30 of November of 1943 , won his first success as a singer thanks to the support of the music and inspiration of Cole with the classics: “Straighten Up and Fly Right” based on an African – American legend that his father had used as a theme for their sermons. This song is considered to be the predecessor of the earliest rock and roll recordings .

The 8 of June of 1946 , recording “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66” enters the charts of R & B and manages to reach ranking number 3. A few months later, when summer comes, becomes a hit pop bounds near the Top Ten.

Nat King Cole in New York in 1947.

In the second half of 1950 , “Mona Lisa” appears, a ballad that Nat did not like very much at first, but ironically it reached number one in sales and managed to distribute 3 million copies. From that moment on, a new stage in his career began, and he became mainly a ballad singer, although he did not forget his roots in jazz.

On the other hand, Nat King Cole ventured into the world of voice-overs, becoming the first African-American to have his own radio show and shortly afterwards he appeared with his own program on television called “Nat King Cole Show.” This program, which ran 64 episodes, aired weekly on NBC-TV.

In August of 1951 , Cole recorded the song “Unforgettable,” which reaches ranked number 12 in the charts.

In July 1957, “Send for Me,” the most rock & roll-oriented song, entered the Billboard R&B chart and remained in the top spots for two weeks in a row. At the end of that same year, Cole makes his last appearance on the “Nat King Cole Show.”

His latest hit was the most curious, a “remaster” of the song Unforgettable in a duet with his daughter Nathalie Cole , also a singer when he had already died.

He fought all his life against Racism and refused to act in places where racial segregation was practiced. In 1956 , while performing in Alabama, he was attacked by members of the “Council of White Citizens” who tried to kidnap him. Although he suffered various injuries, he completed the performance, in which he announced that he would never again act in the south.

Death

Nat King Cole, heavy smoker, died on 15 of February of 1965 , because of a lung cancer in a hospital in Santa Monica, but not tarnish his last years at all its historical and stylistic contribution to jazz piano.

Nat King Cole in spanish

In 1958 , Nat “King” Cole further extended his worldwide popularity to Spanish-speaking countries by recording some of his performances in Spanish. For this, in studios in Havana (today belonging to the Cuban record company EGREM ) and in Mexico , he recorded his first LP in this language, entitled Cole Español, being accompanied by the Armando Romeu Jr. orchestra and a group of Mariachis , something surprising. in an artist from jazz. This album reported him so much success that contracts began to arrive to him to act by Latin America .

In this sense, it is noteworthy that when Cole performed in Caracas , Venezuela that same year, hired by the TV presenter Renny Ottolina, the singer asked him about the most popular Venezuelan songs. The presenter replied that the famous Venezuelan waltz Anxiety (composed by José Enrique “Chelique” Sarabia) was one of them. So, with the help of Ottolina and Sarabia, Nat “King” Cole learned this subject sentence by sentence, since he could not speak Spanish. Finally, this theme was included in his next album in Spanish and Portuguese A Mis Amigos released in 1959 . This cycle closes with his last recording in Spanish titled More Cole Español in 1962 .

Fun facts

In July of 2003 British musicologists found important similarities in the lyrics and rhyme schemes of “Yesterday” and the song “Answer Me” by Nat King Cole, which led to speculation that Paul McCartney had been influenced by that song. Others claimed that McCartney might have unconsciously relied on Ray Charles’s version of “Georgia On My Mind.”

It should also be noted that, in 1983 , an employee of the Dutch subsidiary of his record company (Capitol Records) discovered in the archives, recordings of Cole that had been unreleased at his death, including a song in Japanese, some in English and one in Spanish, titled “Eres Tan Amable”. The record company ordered the emission of a new album with these songs, titled “Nat King Cole: Unreleased”. After the advent of compact disc technology these songs were released again.

Partial Discography