Grammy Award-Winner Natalie Cole Has Died at age 65

BroadwayWorld has learned the sad news that Grammy Award-winner Natalie Cole has passed away. Having most recently appeared on Broadway in the musical revue AFTER MIDNIGHT in 2014, she died of congestive heart failure on December 31. She was 65.

Natalie Maria Cole (February 6, 1950 - December 31, 2015) was an American singer, songwriter, and performer. The daughter of Nat King Cole, Natalie rose to musical success in the mid-1970s as an R&B artist with the hits "This Will Be", "Inseparable", and "Our Love". After a period of failing sales and performances due to a heavy drug addiction, Cole re-emerged as a pop artist with the 1987 album Everlasting and her cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac". In the 1990s, she re-recorded standards by her father, resulting in her biggest success, "Unforgettable... with Love," which sold over seven million copies and also won Cole numerous Grammy Awards. She sold over 30 million records worldwide.

Natalie Cole was born at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles, the daughter of crooner Nat King Cole and former Duke Ellington Orchestra singer Maria Hawkins Ellington, and raised in the affluent Hancock Park district of Los Angeles. Regarding her childhood, Cole referred to her family as "the black Kennedys" and was exposed to many great singers of jazz, soul and blues. At the age of 6, Natalie sang on her father's Christmas album and later began performing at age 11.

Cole grew up with older adopted sister Carole "Cookie" (1944-2009) (her mother Maria's younger sister's daughter); adopted brother Nat "Kelly" Cole (1959-95), and younger twin sisters Timolin and Casey (born 1961).

Her paternal uncle Freddy Cole is a singer and pianist with numerous albums and awards. Cole enrolled in Northfield School, an elite New England preparatory school before her father died of lung cancer in February 1965. Soon afterwards she began having a difficult relationship with her mother. She enrolled in the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She transferred briefly to University of Southern California where she pledged the Upsilon chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She later transferred back to the University of Massachusetts, where she majored in Child Psychology and minored in German, graduating in 1972.

Natalie Cole rocketed to stardom in 1975 with her debut album, Inseparable, earning her a #1 single, "This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)" and her first two Grammy® awards for Best New Artist and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance

In 1977, Cole scored a No. 1 R&B hit with "I've Got Love on My Mind" from her third release, Unpredictable, which became her first platinum album. Cole continued her winning streak that same year with her fourth album, Thankful, which also went platinum and featured another signature hit, "Our Love."

The singer expanded her success with her own TV special in 1977. It was the first of more than 300 major television appearances in her career, including dramatic roles on "Law and Order" and "Touched by an Angel" as well as guest spots on talk shows with Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, and Larry King.

In 1979, Cole was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

After overcoming personal challenges, Cole returned in peak form with 1987's Everlasting, an album which garnered three hit singles: "Jump Start (My Heart)," the Top 10 ballad "I Live For Your Love," and her dance-pop cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac."

Cole marked a career milestone in 1991 with the release of Unforgettable...With Love, featuring the celebrated duet with her late father, Nat King Cole. The album spent five weeks at No. 1 on the pop charts, earned six Grammy® awards, and sold more than 14 million copies worldwide.

In 1996, Cole released a follow-up album of American standards, Stardust, which featured another duet with her father on "When I Fall in Love." The album went platinum and won another Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.

Subsequent albums, Snowfall on the Sahara (1999) and Ask a Woman Who Knows (2002), both merited the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Artist

Cole took home her ninth career GRAMMY® award for 2008's Still Unforgettable, which won for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. It also earned Natalie a NAACP Award for Best Jazz Artist."

In 2001, she starred as herself in "Livin' for Love: the Natalie Cole Story," based on her autobiography, Angel on My Shoulder, which detailed her harrowing drive to overcome drug addiction. She received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special. As an actress, Natalie starred in director Delbert Mann's "Lily in Winter" and co-starred with Laurence Fishburne and Cicely Tyson in Walter Mosley's "Always Outnumbered

Cole released a second memoir in 2010 titled "Love Brought Me Back," the heart-wrenching chronicle of her quest for a kidney transplant.

Natalie Cole most recently as spokesperson for the University Kidney Research Organization, a nonprofit organization supporting medical research related to the prevention, treatment, and eradication of all form of kidney disease.

Source: NatalieCole.com