Nathaniel Adams Coles, known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American jazz pianist and vocalist. He recorded over one hundred songs that became hits on the pop charts. Cole acquired his nickname, “King”, a nickname presumably reinforced by the otherwise unrelated nursery rhyme about Old King Cole.
Old King Cole was a merry old soul,
And a merry old soul was he;
He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl,
And he called for his fiddlers three.
Every fiddler he had a fiddle,
And a very fine fiddle had he;
Oh there’s none so rare, as can compare,
With King Cole and his fiddlers three.
According to legend, Cole’s singing career did not start until a drunken barroom patron demanded that he sing “Sweet Lorraine”. Cole said that this fabricated story “sounded good, so I just let it ride.” He frequently sang between instrumental numbers. Noticing that people started to request more vocal numbers, he obliged. Yet the story of the insistent customer is not without some truth. There was a customer who requested a certain song one night, but it was a song which Cole did not know, so instead he sang “Sweet Lorraine”. The trio was tipped 15¢ ($2.65 in 2017) for the performance. Cole’s first mainstream vocal hit was his 1943 recording of one of his compositions, “Straighten Up and Fly Right”, based on a black folk tale that his father had used as a theme for a sermon. Johnny Mercer invited him to record it for his fledgling Capitol Records. It sold over 500,000 copies. Cole’s hit recording “The Christmas Song” was the first of his solo vocal recordings to be accompanied by a studio orchestra. This marked the start of his rise as an internationally acclaimed popular singer, with a smooth and sophisticated style. Beginning in the late 1940s, Cole began recording and performing pop-oriented material for mainstream audiences, in which he was often accompanied by a string orchestra. His stature as a popular star was cemented during this period by hits such as “All For You” (1943), “The Christmas Song”, “Mona Lisa” (The #1 Song of 1950), “Too Young” (the #1 song of 1951), and his signature song, “Unforgettable” (1951) (Gainer 1), “Let There Be Love” (1961), “Ramblin’ Rose”, “Dear Lonely Hearts” (1962), “That Sunday, That Summer” (1963), “L-O-V-E” (1964), among the 30 or so chart topping hit. “Unforgettable” was made famous again in 1991 by Cole’s daughter Natalie when modern recording technology was used to reunite father and daughter in a duet. The duet version rose to the top of the pop charts, almost forty years after its original popularity.
On November 5, 1956, The Nat ‘King’ Cole Show debuted on NBC. The variety program was one of the first hosted by an African American, which created controversy at the time. Beginning as a 15-minute pops show on Monday night, the program was expanded to a half-hour in July 1957. Despite the efforts of NBC, as well as many of Cole’s industry colleagues—many of whom, such as Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Belafonte, Frankie Laine, Mel Tormé, Peggy Lee, Eartha Kitt, Tony Bennett and the backing vocal group the Cheerleaders, worked for industry scale in order to help the show save money, The Nat ‘King’ Cole Show was ultimately done in by lack of a national sponsorship. Companies such as Rheingold Beer assumed regional sponsorship of the show, but a national sponsor never appeared. The last episode of The Nat King Cole Show aired December 17, 1957. Cole had survived for over a year, and it was he, not NBC, who ultimately decided to end the program. Commenting on the lack of sponsorship his show received, Cole quipped shortly after its demise, “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.”
In September 1964, Cole began to lose weight and he experienced back pain. Cole entered St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica on December 7, and cobalt therapy was started on December 10. Cole’s condition gradually worsened, but he was released from the hospital over the New Year’s period in 1965. At home Cole was able to see the hundreds of thousands of cards and letters that had been sent after news of his illness was made public. Cole returned to the hospital in early January. On January 25, Cole’s entire left lung was surgically removed. On Valentine’s Day, he and his wife briefly left St. John’s to drive by the sea. Cole died at the hospital early in the morning of February 15, 1965, aged 45. His success at Capitol Records, for which he recorded more than 150 singles that reached the Billboard Pop, R&B, and Country charts, has yet to be matched by any Capitol artist. His records sold 50 million copies during his career and his 1957 recording of “When I Fall in Love” reached number 4 in the UK charts in 1987. “The Christmas Song” still receives airplay every holiday season. Nat King Cole’s remains were interred in Freedom Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Glendale, California.
Nat’s Christmas Song.
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