Singer Natalie Cole, the Grammy award-winning daughter of jazz legend Nat King Cole, has died at the age of 65.
Inspired by her dad at an early age, she began her career as an R&B singer. Natalie had a top 40 hit in the UK with This Will Be in 1975, before enjoying a renaissance in the charts from the late 1980s.
Hits around this time included 1988′s Pink Cadillac (peaking at number five in the UK), 1989′s Miss You Like Crazy (a top two hit in the UK) and 1990′s Wild Women Do, which reached number 16 in the UK and was featured on the Pretty Woman movie soundtrack.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30PqLGidLeM&feature=oembed
Natalie later gravitated toward the jazz standards that her father, who died of lung cancer in 1965, loved so much.
Her 1991 album, Unforgettable … With Love sold 14 million copies and won six Grammys. It featured reworked versions of some of her father’s best-known songs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKCyUe4syc4&feature=oembed
In her 2000 autobiography Angel On My Shoulder, the singer opened up about her heroin, crack cocaine and alcohol addiction. She spent six months in rehab in 1983.
Natalie also popped up on TV, with appearances in the likes of Touched By An Angel and Grey’s Anatomy.
Natalie passed away on Thursday evening at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles due to compilations from ongoing health issues, her family said in a statement.
The statement from her son Robert Yancy and twin sisters Timolin and Casey Cole said: “Natalie fought a fierce, courageous battle, dying how she lived … with dignity, strength and honour. Our beloved Mother and sister will be greatly missed and remain UNFORGETTABLE in our hearts forever."
