Natalie Cole
Natalie Cole
Natalie Maria Colewas an American singer-songwriter, and actress. The daughter of Nat King Cole, she 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJazz Singer
Date of Birth6 February 1950
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
There's inevitably something missing when you grow up in this kind of an environment when your parents travel a lot. When your father is famous, you are looked at and expected of. There are standards you need to meet.
I continually acted up to get attention. My father gave me that, and once he left, I felt that I didn't have any.
God was going to be to me the father that I never had, the father that I didn't have enough of, enough time with.
Like my father, I don't want to see anyone mistreated, anything like that. I'm very racial-conscious because my father had a lot of, you know, challenges in the area of race. I'm very sensitive to that kind of issue.
The house where I grew up in the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles was like a dream - even though my family faced threats after my father bought it in August 1948.
I started saying, 'I don't want to be crazy anymore.' I need to make some changes. And the first thing I started doing was just got all the men out of my life, because that was a big problem for me. That was a crutch, if you will. You know, trying to define yourself through other people or men, in particular.
The worst I think that I ever was, when 'Unforgettable' had come out, and not long after that I was on - I was on my way to my second divorce. And that was a crushing, crushing blow.
People said when I started, 'Why don't you just copy your father's style?' I had to be myself, singing my songs in my own way.
I've always loved Spanish. I love my father's Spanish records.
I've always adored my father's music, but ever since I'd started singing, whether it was while I was still a student at the University of Massachusetts or professionally, I avoided Dad's material.
I've always been an extremist. Some of us have very addictive personalities, and for some of us, that mechanism gets tripped up. Mine certainly did. I'm not cured. You never are. The recovery is a day-to-day process.
I've always been interested in the office. I was a secretary a long time ago, and I've always been into paperwork. My first secretarial job was 1965 or 1966.
I was pretty young, but because of that first record, 'Cole Espanol,' we took our first trip - well, my first trip - to Mexico.
I would never do an album with 10 songs like 'Jump Start' on it. I'll only go so far to please fans.