Nat King Cole

The organ came first. Perlina Coles played it at the Chicago church where her husband preached after the family came up from Montgomery, Alabama, and her son learned the keyboard beside her. Formal piano lessons began at 12 and ran from Bach to Rachmaninoff. He also slipped out at night to sit on the sidewalk outside South Side clubs and hear Earl Hines. At 15 he quit school. He cut two sides for Decca with his brother Eddie's band, toured with a revival of Shuffle Along, married a woman from the cast in 1937, and landed in Los Angeles looking for work. A club owner asked him to put a group together. He hired a guitarist and a bassist and left out the drums.

The King Cole Trio — piano, guitar, bass, no drums — was the top-selling group on Capitol Records in the 1940s and the model for the small jazz combos that came after it. Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans both named him an early influence, Evans calling him one of the swingingest melodic improvisers jazz ever had. Then he started singing. "Sweet Lorraine" in 1940, "Straighten Up and Fly Right" in 1944, and after that the piano moved out of the frame: "The Christmas Song", "Mona Lisa", "Unforgettable". He sold 50 million records, and most buyers never heard him play.

In August 1948 Cole bought a house in all-white Hancock Park, and someone burned a cross on the lawn. The property owners association told him it wanted no undesirables in the neighborhood. Cole answered that neither did he, and if he saw any he would complain first. In 1956 three men rushed the stage in Birmingham and knocked him off his piano bench. That November NBC gave him a variety show, the first on a national network hosted by a Black American. It ran 13 months and died because no national sponsor would touch it. Madison Avenue, Cole said, was afraid of the dark. The Black press came at him from the other side, for playing segregated houses. Thurgood Marshall said all he lacked was a banjo. Cole responded by taking a lifetime NAACP membership and paying for it.

He smoked heavily, by several accounts believing it kept his voice low. In December 1964 a chest X-ray found a tumor on his left lung. Surgeons removed the lung on January 25, and Cole vowed that if he lived he would go on television and tell people to stop smoking. He died on February 15, 1965, at 45. What survived him was the singer: a 1994 postage stamp carrying a birth year his widow said was wrong, his daughter Natalie's 1991 duet on "Unforgettable", and "The Christmas Song" reaching the Billboard top 10 in 2022, 62 years after it first charted. The pianist came back more slowly, through reissues and through the players who never stopped naming him.

Nat King Cole's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Straighten Up and Fly Right song
  The trio's breakthrough and one of the few hits he wrote himself 1944
• The Christmas Song song
  Cut four times — the 1961 stereo version is the one still played 1946
• Mona Lisa song
  The number one song of 1950 1950
• Unforgettable song
  Remade in 1991 as an electronic duet with his daughter Natalie 1951
• The Nat King Cole Show television
  NBC variety series — the first on a national network hosted by a Black American 1956
• After Midnight album
  The all-jazz record that put him back at the piano 1957

• March 17, 1919 aged 0 Born Nathaniel Adams Coles in Montgomery, Alabama The family moved to Chicago when he was four, where his father became a Baptist minister.
• 1937 aged ~18 Forms the King Cole Trio in Los Angeles Piano, guitar and bass with no drummer — a format copied across small-group jazz.
• 1944 aged ~25 "Straighten Up and Fly Right" makes the trio a national act By then Capitol had signed them — the label's only Black act and its best-selling group.
• August 1948 aged 29 Buys a house in all-white Hancock Park, Los Angeles A cross was burned on the lawn and the family dog died of poisoned meat.
• April 10, 1956 aged 37 Attacked on stage in Birmingham, Alabama Three men from the North Alabama Citizens Council rushed the stage. Police found rifles and brass knuckles in a car outside.
• November 5, 1956 aged 37 The Nat King Cole Show debuts on NBC The last episode aired December 17, 1957. No national sponsor was ever found.
• August 28, 1963 aged 44 Takes part in the March on Washington He had helped plan it, after years of criticism that he stayed out of the movement.
• December 1964 aged 45 A chest X-ray in San Francisco finds a tumor on his left lung He kept recording anyway and finished the album L-O-V-E days before entering hospital.
• February 15, 1965 aged 45 Dies of lung cancer at 45 in Santa Monica Sinatra, Count Basie and Sammy Davis Jr. were among the honorary pallbearers.

• Frank Sinatra 1915–1998
  Crooner and actor whose voice and charisma made him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. friend and pallbearer
• Ella Fitzgerald 1917–1996
  Singer whose technical command and interpretations helped define jazz and the Great American Songbook. guest on his NBC show
• Count Basie 1904–1984
  Kansas City bandleader whose rhythm section reset what a big band could swing like. pallbearer