Cole, Natalie

views updated

Natalie Cole

Singer

Rhythm and blues singer Natalie Cole rose to stardom almost overnight and then fell into obscurity just as precipitously. The spirited daughter of the late Nat “King” Cole was one of the top black performers in the mid- to late-1970s; awarded a Grammy in 1975 as best new artist of the year, she seemed destined to duplicate her famous father’s career—without echoing his sound. According to Ebony contributor Herschel Johnson, Cole’s albums have shown her voice “to have considerable style and facility, [easily] handling everything from the sizzling rhythmic strains…to the tender ballad lines…. And her phrasing, like that of her late father, is expertly sympathetic.”

Cole became a superstar at twenty-five and was showered with acclaim and awards over the next three years. By 1982, however, ill health, drug abuse, and a failed marriage had sidetracked her career. She has yet to recover her earlier level of success, although she continues to perform and to handle her own affairs. Reflecting on her life’s low points, Cole told Newsweek: “I managed to survive the worst things any entertainer could possible go through.”

Natalie Maria Cole was born in 1950, the second of Nat and Maria Cole’s five children. Throughout the 1950s her father was one of the highest paid performers in the world, with his own prime-time television show and a string of bestselling albums. “On stage, he was a star,” Cole told Ebony, “but at home he was an ordinary father—a companion.” Raised in wealth and luxury, Cole learned to love music under the influence of both of her parents; her mother had been a principal singer with the Duke Ellington orchestra before her marriage. Still, young Natalie was not encouraged to pursue music as a career. Instead she attended college at the University of Massachusetts, eventually earning a Bachelor’s degree in child psychology.

Cole began singing professionally quite by chance, when she went looking for summer work as a waitress and wound up fronting a local band. Good club bookings followed—but they were invariably based on the strength of her father’s name. Cole found this “humiliating” at times but accepted it as an opportunity to bypass the years of struggle some artists must endure. “It was only natural that I should resent it,” she told High Fidelity magazine in 1977, “because I wanted to be recognized for my own talent, but at the same time it made me realize just how famous my father was. And I guess if I had been Ann Smith, I’d probably still be struggling and maybe just now being able to get ahead.”

Cole may have gotten a start on her father’s coattails, but once she took the stage she developed her own style and repertoire, based on influences as various as Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Carole King, and the

For the Record…

Full name, Natalie Maria Cole; born February 6, 1950, in Los Angeles, Calif.; daughter of Nat “King” (a pianist and singer) and Maria (a singer; maiden name, Hawkins) Cole; married Marvin J. Yancy (a composer and producer), July 30, 1976 (divorced, 1979); children: Robert Adam. Education: University of Massachusetts, B.A., 1972. Politics: Democrat.Religion: Baptist.

Adresses: Office –c/o 11780 Moorpark St. #3, Studio City, CA 91604. Agent —International Creative Management, 40 West 57th St., New York, NY 10019.

Professional singer, 1972—; recording artist, 1975—.

Awards: City Council of City of Los Angeles, Calif., declared September 25, 1975 “Natalie Cole Day” ; Grammy Award for best new artist, 1976, and best rhythm and blues female vocalist, 1976 and 1977; Image Award from National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1976 and 1977; American Music Award, 1978; four gold and two platinum albums.

Beatles. In Ebony, Louie Robinson writes that the young singer “exploded on the national scene… rising to the top like cream with a dazzling flourish of versatility: ballads, torch-rock, rhythm-and-blues.” According to John Storm Roberts in High Fidelity, the core of Cole’s sound, “both in quantity and quality, is a joyous pop-soul singing: The sound of early Motown soul, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, and above all, the early Aretha Franklin.”

Cole’s success on her own terms was greatly aided by producer/songwriters Chuck Jackson and Marvin Yancy, who provided her with material and helped to engineer her albums for Capitol Records. With their support, her 1975 debut album, Inseparable, with its chart-topping single “This Will Be,” went platinum and won her two Grammy awards. Roberts called the Cole-Jackson-Yancy relationship “a partnership that obviously can’t be faulted commercially; but it also works well musically, never dominating [Cole] or giving the impression that she is being jammed art-first into some unsuitable sack marked ‘What’s happening.’”

Once established—and married to Yancy—Cole seemed reluctant to experiment stylistically. Roberts suggests that she seemed satisfied to be a “club singer with an almost perfect command of the current hip-pop middle ground…. Black middle of the road, you might call it, not simply all-American middle of the road sung by black singers, but… with specifically black references: hip but slightly deodorized rhythm and blues, gospel-soul, the jazz-ballad tradition and a nostalgia for the great period of soul when its audience was kids.”

By the early 1980s, Cole was quarreling with her manager, her band, and the executives at Capitol, all of whom she claimed were ignoring her wishes. Her marriage to Yancy ended in divorce in 1979. To quote Essence correspondent Jack Slater, “her fabled zest for life was turning sour, and the sourness compounded the loneliness and her growing inability to cope. Things began to fall apart.” Depressed and alone, Cole turned to cocaine. “I must say that I did succumb to the weakness,” she told Essence of her drug abuse. “At one time I would stay in my bedroom for hours on end. I didn’t do anything but that.” To make matters worse, she developed throat polyps that had to be removed surgically—a potentially career-ending condition.

In 1982 Cole’s mother sued for control of her daughter’s finances, and eventually the troubled singer was able to find the privacy and therapy to regain her health. She returned to work—and to the responsibility for her assets—in 1983. Cole told High Fidelity: “I remember my father saying that ‘hits are not important—it’s longevity that matters.’” It is just this “longevity” that Cole is striving for now. She maintains a professional association with Yancy and has returned to live club performance on a regular basis.

Cole told Ebony that she feels a singer “should be a human instrument. So whatever I [do] with my voice, I [want] to make it work with the music and not sing against the music or stand above it, but enhance it, like flavoring and seasoning.” According to Roberts, Cole has achieved the goal of being that “human instrument.” Roberts concludes: “In a period of decadence, fatigue, and gimmicks, she returns to the central issues of voice, tune, and spirit. To reinterpret the ethos of the young Aretha, to keep it all clean and tight and youthful, to back herself with classically joyous, shouting gospel-soul chorus and jumping musicians, is to return to what classic r & b was all about.”