The Full Biography
Nat King Cole. Singer. Pianist. The Montgomery boy who made a jazz trio into a living room, then found that Madison Avenue would not pay to keep a Black man in that room.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a man at a piano, a velvet baritone, and the first line of “The Christmas Song” treated as weather. Chestnuts. An open fire. A voice that sounds as if it were leaning in. What the still cannot show is Nathaniel Adams Coles of Montgomery and then Chicago, a preacher’s son, a trio that taught small-group jazz how to sell records, a national television show the sponsors would not underwrite, a Birmingham stage that turned violent, and a death in Santa Monica at forty-five that the songs have never accepted as the end of the season.
He was born on March 17, 1919, in Montgomery, Alabama, to the Reverend Edward Coles and Perlina Adams Coles, the church organist. The household moved to Chicago when he was a boy. The first pressure was a piano in a Baptist weather: hymns from the mother, jazz from the South Side after dark. He left school for the work. He played. He took the name King — a crown, a billing, a joke that stuck — and dropped the s from Coles. By 1937 he had the King Cole Trio: his piano, Oscar Moore’s guitar, Wesley Prince’s bass. No drummer. The group was a room, not a bandstand argument. Capitol Records, when it began, made them a foundation act. The trio was not a warmup for the voice. It was the first career, and it was already complete.
The door the pop public still recognizes is 1943 and 1944. “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” built on a sermon his father had used — a monkey and a buzzard, a lesson about not riding someone else’s wings — became a hit that crossed the line the industry had drawn around race. The voice, which he had treated as a sideline, moved to the center because people asked for it. In 1946 he first recorded “The Christmas Song,” Mel Tormé and Robert Wells’s winter inventory. In 1948 “Nature Boy” went to number one. In 1950 “Mona Lisa” did the same and finished the transformation: the jazz pianist had become one of the most popular vocalists in the country. “Unforgettable” arrived in 1951. “Too Young.” “Pretend.” “Smile.” The baritone made a standard sound like a confidence, not like a chart.
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He bought a house in Hancock Park, Los Angeles, in 1948, in a neighborhood that did not want him. The welcome included threats, a racial mark burned into the lawn, a shot through a window. He stayed. On April 10, 1956, in Birmingham, at the Municipal Auditorium, members of a White Citizens’ Council rushed the stage and beat him. He finished the performance. The Black press had already argued with him for playing segregated rooms. The attack did not make him a speechmaker. It made the file honest: the voice that soothed white living rooms was not safe in an Alabama hall.
In November 1956 NBC put him on national television as host of The Nat King Cole Show. He was the first Black entertainer to hold a network variety hour of that kind. Ella Fitzgerald came. The work was elegant. National sponsors would not stay. NBC carried the program for a time at a loss. In December 1957 it ended. He named the reason without a press agent’s fog.
Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.Nat King Cole
Capitol kept the voice in print as if the canceled hour had been a weather report and not a verdict. After Midnight (1957) put him back at the piano with a small group and proved the trio man had not been retired by the ballads. Love Is the Thing, the same year’s Nelson Riddle collaboration, gave the country “Stardust” and “When I Fall in Love” in the velvet that living rooms already treated as furniture. “Answer Me, My Love.” “A Blossom Fell.” “Send for Me.” “Looking Back.” He acted when a studio would have him: W. C. Handy in St. Louis Blues (1958); a soldier’s face in China Gate; the singing presence in Cat Ballou that the picture still uses as a chorus. He did not become a movie star. He became a man a picture could hire when it needed a voice the audience already trusted.
“Ramblin’ Rose” (1962) went to No. 2 and reminded radio that the baritone still sold after the screen had gone dark. “Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer.” “That Sunday, That Summer.” “L-O-V-E,” cut in 1964 with a bounce that does not sound like a man who had already started to cough blood. He took part in the March on Washington in August 1963 — not as a speechmaker, as a national voice willing to stand where the country was being asked to look. The Birmingham beating of 1956 had not made him a columnist. The canceled hour had not made him bitter in public. He named Madison Avenue and then went back to the work the avenue would still buy: records, tours, a film date, a room in Las Vegas or London that did not require a soap sponsor.
The trio sides are a complete jazz career that the Christmas tape has almost buried. “Sweet Lorraine.” “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66.” “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” the sermon about a monkey and a buzzard, Capitol’s early fortune. Oscar Moore’s guitar and a bass — Wesley Prince, then Johnny Miller — and no drummer. The group taught small-group jazz how to sell records without shouting. When the voice moved to the center, the pianist did not vanish. He sat under the baritone and kept the time. “Nature Boy,” written by eden ahbez, went to No. 1 in 1948 and sounded like no other Capitol single: a mystic on the charts. “Too Young.” “Pretend.” “Smile.” “Unforgettable.” “Mona Lisa.” “Answer Me, My Love.” “A Blossom Fell.” “Send for Me.” The living room learned his name one ballad at a time. Nelson Riddle’s Love Is the Thing and the small-group After Midnight are the same man in two rooms, both of them complete.
The Birmingham night of April 10, 1956, was two audiences. He played a white show at the Municipal Auditorium; members of a White Citizens’ Council rushed the stage and beat him. He finished. He played the Black show as scheduled. The Black press had already argued with him for taking segregated rooms. He was not a columnist. He was a working singer who named Madison Avenue when the variety hour died and then went back to the dates that still paid. Hancock Park, 401 South Muirfield, stayed his house after a burned mark on the lawn and a shot through a window. He bought it in 1948. He did not move.
Maria Hawkins, who had sung with Duke Ellington’s orchestra, married him in 1948 after the Nadine Robinson marriage ended. Natalie arrived in 1950. Carole. Nat Kelly. The twins Timolin and Casey in 1961. Freddy Cole, the brother, kept a jazz singer’s life that never needed the Christmas tape. The Hancock Park house was a family and a civic argument. He smoked the Chesterfield way on camera. He marched in 1963. He kept the dates. He kept the house. He named Madison Avenue and then went back to work. The sentence is the file. That is the worker under the velvet.
That is the turn, and it is easy to miss because the public remembers the Christmas record, not a canceled hour. The turn is the living room he had already entered with the voice, and the advertising street that would not pay to leave him there. A lot of singers in his position sanded the career into supper-club safety. He kept recording. He kept touring. The show’s death did not return him to the trio. It left him what he had been since “Mona Lisa”: a national voice the nation would buy on disc and would not fully underwrite on the air.
Six things most people never knew
- The first instrument is the piano, not the throat. Montgomery, then Chicago. A preacher’s house. The King Cole Trio was a complete jazz act before the ballads made him a household name.
- “Straighten Up and Fly Right” is a sermon his father used. A monkey, a buzzard, a warning. Capitol’s early fortune sits on church weather, not on a pop committee.
- Hancock Park did not invite him. 1948. Threats, a burned mark, a bullet through glass. He kept the house.
- Birmingham, April 10, 1956, was an assault on a stage, not a rumor. He finished the show. The living-room voice and the attacked body are the same man.
- NBC put him on national television. Sponsors walked. 1956–57. He said Madison Avenue was afraid of the dark. The sentence is the file, not a caption writer’s invention.
- He smoked as if the ads were the truth. Chesterfield cameras. A heavy habit. Lung cancer took him at forty-five. The velvet was never a clean room.
He married Nadine Robinson, a dancer, in 1937. The marriage ended in 1948. That year he married Maria Hawkins, a jazz singer who had worked with Duke Ellington’s orchestra and was not his kin. Their children include Natalie, born in 1950, who would become a singer with a career of her own; Carole, whom they raised; Nat Kelly Cole; and the twins Timolin and Casey, born in 1961. A brother, Freddy Cole, kept a jazz singer’s life that never needed the Christmas tape. Friends from the Capitol years describe a professional who arrived prepared and left without a scene. The household in Hancock Park was a family and a civic argument. Both are the life.
The later years
The last chapter is short because the body gave him a short chapter. Home was still Hancock Park — 401 South Muirfield Road — the house a neighborhood had tried to refuse in 1948 and that he had refused to surrender. Maria Hawkins Cole ran the household. Natalie was already a teenager with a voice. The twins, Timolin and Casey, were small. Nat Kelly and Carole were in the file. He kept a film and television presence the canceled variety hour had not exhausted. He recorded the L-O-V-E album. He played the rooms that still paid a national baritone. He smoked the way the Chesterfield cameras had taught a generation to smoke, as if the ads were a medical opinion.
In 1964 the lung cancer was no longer a rumor he could smoke past. He worked through the diagnosis the way he had worked through Birmingham and through a lawn with a burned mark on it: show up, do the date, do not make a speech of the injury. The last sessions have a man who knows the clock and will not say so on the take. On February 15, 1965, he died at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. He was forty-five. Maria and the children were the house. The funeral drew the town that had bought the records and the town that had not bought the television hour. He is buried at Forest Lawn in Glendale. Capitol’s catalog was already a season the country intended to keep.
He had not been given an elder’s decade of tribute concerts and honorary chairs. He had been given twenty-some years as a national voice and he used them. The last television appearances still have the posture of a man hosting a room, even when the room is no longer his hour. The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction arrived as the industry’s manners after the fact. Natalie would, in 1991, build a duet on the old “Unforgettable” tape and send the baritone back to No. 1. That séance is a daughter’s work. The Hancock Park years, the canceled hour, and the Santa Monica hospital are his.
After he was gone
Natalie Cole kept the name in the charts. In 1991 she built a duet on his recording of “Unforgettable,” a technological séance that won Grammys and sent the old baritone back to number one. The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction arrived as the town’s manners. “The Christmas Song” still opens December in rooms that do not know the Birmingham date. Hancock Park is just a neighborhood now. The show’s cancellation is still the sentence about Madison Avenue.
He came out of Montgomery, learned the piano in Chicago, built a trio, sang a sermon into a hit, made “Mona Lisa” and “Unforgettable” into furniture, bought a house a neighborhood tried to refuse, was beaten on an Alabama stage, hosted a television hour the sponsors would not fund, marched in 1963, and died at forty-five with smoke in the file. If you only remember the chestnuts, you have the still. If you remember Hancock Park, Birmingham, and a man who named the dark on Madison Avenue, you have him.
Portrait: General Artists Corporation (management) · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons