natalie cole - Networking Magazine

Unforgettable
N ATA L I E C O L E
STORY BY CHRISTINE GIORDANO • PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAM MORRIS ENDEAVOUR
ith a voice as silky and timeless as her father’s, Natalie Cole has had a
music career that has spanned the decades. Now, she’ll be releasing
something entirely different.
“I've just finished recording my very first Spanish Language CD. “Natalie Cole
en Espanol” I'm very excited for the release on June 25th !” she excitedly told Networking® magazine. The album claims to have “The Most Romantic Songs Of The
Great Spanish Language Composers.” Produced by Rudy Pérez, it will also feature
guest artists (“Bachata Rosa” with Juan Luis Guerra, “Besame Mucho” with Andrea
Bocelli and a digital duet with her late father, Nat King Cole, to “Acércate Más.”)
Cole says when she was considering her next album to broaden her “spectrum,”
she was inspired by her father who was one of the first American stars to go to Latin
America.
In 1991, when she did her first digital duet “Unforgettable” with her late father,
the record skyrocketed to the top of the charts, lingering at #1 for five weeks, earning six Grammy Awards including Song, Record and Album of the Year, and eventually selling more than 14 million copies. The world was enchanted by the two
golden-toned singers, and the thought that a girl who had lost her father at 15, could
entwine herself within his memory for all time. By using digital technology, the two
were able to blend their voices.
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Life as Nat’s Daughter
Cole’s loved her father and strings together memories from when he was alive,
despite the fact that he was often on the road for weeks and months at a time.
“When you make your living as a singer, you have to go where the gigs are,” she
explained in her autobiography, “Angel On My Shoulder.”
When he was home, Nat’s time with his children wasn’t stressful or crimped.
“He just wanted to play,” she wrote.
He’d hurry home with acetates of new recordings he had worked on during the
day at Capitol Records, and play them in the house library on his custom-made Seeburg Selectomatic sound system, which Natalie called a golden and glass “frou-frou
home jukebox.”
“I love the fact that when he was home he was just being dad. He wasn’t performing,” she said.
She doesn’t remember him bellowing his hit songs around the house. He never
even sang Mona Lisa at home with his kids, but he did sing fun children’s songs,
like “Kee Mo Ky Mo,” from the flip side of his record “Sweet Lorraine.” When she
was 6, she sang with him on a Christmas album, and charmed the world with her
smile that was missing her two front teeth.
“I cherish the memories,” she writes.
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14 NETWORKING June/July 2013
Cole believes angels have looked out for her
throughout her life, saving her from
precarious situations such as hotel fires,
and drug overdoses.
Musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey, “Uncle Frank” Sinatra, Ella
Fitzgerald regularly dropped by the house. The family was living in the exclusive
Los Angeles suburb, Hancock Park, which the Coles had to battle to be a part of before Natalie was born. When the Property Owners Association heard that the Coles
had bought into the community, they informed Mr. Cole why he couldn’t live there.
“They actually told my dad that they didn’t want any undesirables moving in.
‘Neither do I he responded…’ and if I see any, I’ll be sure to let you know, wrote
Cole.
She says he always kept his cool. “Nat didn’t express himself in the negative,” she
explained during an interview.
He passed away of lung cancer at 45 while she was attending Northfield School
for Girls in Massachusetts. Her last memories of him being relaxed and happy were
while riding with him in the limousine on their way to her prep school while listening to Diana Ross sing “Baby Love” on the radio. She remembers watching the blazing autumn colors through the car’s windows as Nat puffed his cigarettes. At the
school, he signed autographs for the girls and chatted with her schoolmates.
Finding Herself
It’s hard to imagine that Natalie Cole, with her legendary smooth voice, platinum
hits and gilded lineage has had a hard life. But finding your own identity as the
daughter of a celebrity is not always easy, and her recovery from a life-threatening
disease was something of a miracle.
“For every dark passage I was ultimately led to the light. I appreciate the pleasure
because I’ve had the pain. That’s the way it is. There is no victory without the battle,” she writes.
After the death of her father, Natalie struggled for her own identity. She went to
school to become a doctor, but began singing in the band Black Magic, and got into
drugs. Doors opened to her as Nat’s daughter, and at different moments of her unraveling life, she would arrive, high as a kite to gigs, modeling commercials and
performances. She didn’t realize she was staggering through life until she nodded
off into a microphone while performing and was fired on the spot.
Although people knew she was Nat’s daughter as she walking the streets of
Harlem, she was somewhat protected. She said during an interview that her drug
maze led her to pimps and drug dealers and a “very rich colorful treasure of memories,” adding, “a lot of them were very kind to me. They knew who I was, and I
think they kind of felt like, ‘She’s lost, we’ve gotta take care of her.’ Cole believes angels have looked out for her throughout her life, saving her from precarious situations such as hotel fires, and drug overdoses.
Yet she hasn’t emerged unscathed. Years later, after she won the battle against
drugs, she found it had scarred her life in a way she couldn’t predict or imagine.
Winning the War
“It is up to us to take the pieces that are left over and reinvent ourselves. You’d be
surprised to discover just how precious and valuable those leftovers can be,” she
wrote.
She hit stardom in 1975 with her debut album, “Inseparable,” earning her a #1
single, “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)” and two Grammy® awards for Best
New Artist, as well as Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. More hit singles followed and in 1987, she released “Dangerous,” selling two million copies in the U.S.
and garnering her three hit singles: “Jump Start,” “I Live For Your Love” and a remake of Bruce Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac.”
In 2008, she learned that all of her years of drug use had likely caused her to contract hepatitis C. She was hours from death when a friend heard her rasping breath
over the phone and sent over a doctor. Cole learned her kidneys were barely functioning and her lungs were filling with fluid. Dialysis would became a crucial part
of her life. Yet she still booked singing engagements around the world, often heading to dialysis after a 12 hour flight. She grew so weak, she’d have to be transported
to the stage by wheelchair, but somehow, she still managed to sing and perform.
She needed a kidney transplant, and although she had friends and family who were
willing to donate theirs, they weren’t an organ match. Her strength was fading, and,
while on television, she told talk show host Larry King she needed a kidney.
Because of her experience, Networking® asked her what her advice would be to
people who are living in the depths of despair or facing the brevity of life. She answered, “Always stay positive and focused. Believe in yourself and the power of
prayer.”
A match was somewhat miraculously directed her way by a Larry King viewer
who suddenly lost a relative. But when the call came, Cole was grieving at the
deathbed of her beloved sister Cooke (pronounced Cookie.) She ignored the call, but
at her family’s insistence, finally left her sister’s side to get her transplant. As Cole
was prepped for surgery, her sister’s life slipped away. (To this day, she draws inner
strength from the memory of her beloved sister.)
As she awoke from surgery, she cried tears of joy for her newfound life, and sadness for her lost sister.
Watching interviews of Cole before and after the kidney surgery is remarkable.
Before the surgery, she seemed to summon her energy the way exhausted performers do. After the transplant, the radiance from her hazel-amber eyes seems to glow
through the screen.
But with all that radiance came sadness and grief. She had lost a number of relatives, and it compounded with the loss of her “precious” sister. Now that she had
her strength back, she could finally grieve. But the grief enveloped her.
“The Blues have a life of their own. They don’t want to go away. They want to
linger and last and keep you in isolation,” she wrote in Love Brought Me Back.
Then a card arrived with an invitation she couldn’t possibly refuse.
The sister of the kidney donor wanted to meet her, along with the nurse who had
arranged the transplant match. Cole arranged the meeting, summoned her strength
through her depression, and greeted the sister with open arms. They hugged for a
long time, letting tears drip down their faces without a word.
“We both understood the power of the moment,” the sister, Patty, recalled as a
guest writer in Cole’s book.
Patty wanted to somehow reconnect with the sister she had lost. Natalie understood this on a deep level. Patty gently placed her hand over Natalie’s new kidney
and closed her eyes.
“I felt the spirit of my loving sister,” Patty wrote.
Natalie reflected, “Her hand stayed steady against my skin. The connection was
real. Sisters connecting with sisters….
“What moved me most were Patty’s ideas about the transplant phenomenon. She
didn’t see donating her sister’s organs as merely a gesture. She saw it as a way of literally keeping her sister alive.”
It was the emotional highlight of Cole’s day. In the months following, she was
able to “slowly, very slowly,” pull through her grief.
When Networking® asked her how she’s lived her life differently since the entire
experience, she said, “I always live my life to the fullest and have tried, as I note in
the book, to live by The Four Agreements that my sister Cooke passed on to me from
author Don Miguel Ruiz. 1. Be Impeccable with my words. 2. Don't take anything
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personally. 3. Don't make assumptions. 4. Always do my best.”
Oh, and what would be her advice to budding singers? “Love what you do and
choose your repertoire carefully. Always continue to explore new avenues and practice your craft often,” she said. ■
NETWORKING June/July 2013 15
Natalie Cole
Still slingshoting around the globe, Natalie Cole
will be in New York to perform at
Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center.
Saturday, August 3 • For tickets call 631-288-1500.