Natalie Cole, offspring of the jazz and pop icon Nat King Cole, built a thriving career across three distinct eras. In the 1970s she launched as a soul-grounded performer, shifted toward pop-infused R&B during the 1980s, and from the 1990s into the early 2010s adopted traditional pop as her core approach, mirroring her father’s path. Between 1976 and 2009 she collected nine Grammy Awards, among them Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female for “This Will Be” in 1976, Album of the Year for Unforgettable: With Love in 1992, and Best Traditional Vocal Pop Album for Still Unforgettable in 2009.
She first appeared onstage at eleven and continued singing while in college. In 1973 she encountered the songwriting and production duo Chuck Jackson and Marvin Yancey; the following year the three recorded material at Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom studios in Chicago. Those recordings secured her a contract with Capitol Records, after which she worked steadily with Jackson and Yancey on a run of successful albums and singles that stretched from 1975 to 1983. Releases such as Inseparable, Natalie, Thankful, Unpredictable, and I Love You So generated five number-one R&B singles between 1975 and 1977, including “This Will Be,” “Inseparable,” “Our Love,” and “I’ve Got Love on My Mind.” She remained at Capitol through 1983 before moving to Epic for one final project with the same production team. Additional chart successes arrived with “Jump Start,” “I Live for Your Love,” and “Over You” in 1987 and with “Pink Cadillac,” her reading of a Bruce Springsteen song, in 1988, signaling a gradual change in musical direction.
With the 1991 album Unforgettable: With Love she fully committed to traditional pop; the set topped the Billboard album chart, surpassed five million copies sold, and earned multiple Grammys, among them Record of the Year and Best Traditional Pop Performance for the title track, a virtual duet with her father drawn from his 1961 recording. She sustained the approach on Take a Look in 1993 while touring and taping television specials backed by a large orchestra led by Nelson Riddle. Holly & Ivy (1994) and Stardust (1996) extended her survey of American standards. Snowfall on the Sahara and The Magic of Christmas, the latter recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, appeared at decade’s end. Ask a Woman Who Knows (2002) and Leavin’ (2006) followed on Verve. She then joined Rhino for Still Unforgettable (2008), another standards collection that captured the Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (2010) paired her with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for a Christmas television special first aired on PBS.
En Español (2013), like certain late-1950s projects by her father, consisted entirely of Spanish-language material. Guests included Andrea Bocelli, Juan Luis Guerra, and Arturo Sandoval, while “Acércate Más” (“Come Closer to Me”) once again featured her father via a 1958 recording. Throughout the new millennium Cole confronted significant health challenges, among them a hepatitis C diagnosis she linked to earlier drug use, a period she recounted in her 2000 autobiography Angel on My Shoulder. A kidney transplant took place in 2009; although she resumed touring and recording afterward, persistent medical concerns prompted the cancellation of several December 2015 engagements, and on December 31 she succumbed to congestive heart failure in Los Angeles at age 65.
