Dutch postcard by Takken, no. AX 2002.
(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66
Nat 'King' Cole was born Nathaniel Adams Coles in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1919. When he was four or five (the sources differ), his family moved to Chicago. There his father, Edward James Coles, was a minister at the True Light Baptist Church and later Pastor of the First Baptist Church.
Nat received music lessons from his mother. He learned jazz and gospel music, but also Western classical music. At 12 he was playing the church organ and at 14, he formed a 14 piece band called the Royal Dukes.
His three brothers, Ike Cole, Eddie Cole, and Frankie Cole also played the piano and later sang professionally. In 1939 Nat formed the King Cole Trio after his publicist put a silver tin-foiled crown on his head and proclaimed him King.
He became known as a leading jazz pianist. He soon also became noted for his soft, baritone voice. His recordings of 'Straighten Up And Fly Right' (1943), which sold over 500,000 copies, and '(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66' (1946) would become classics and influenced several Rock and roll singers of the 1950s.
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 3119. Photo: Electrola / Capitol.
Attacked by the White Citizens Council
Nat 'King' Cole met his second wife Maria (a big-band singer) at the Zanzibar nightclub in Los Angeles through the Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson show. Her parents protested her decision to marry Cole, claiming he was "too black".
However, they were married in 1948 and would have five children, including singer Natalie Cole. When he and his family moved to the upscale Hancock Park area of Los Angeles in the late 1940s, they were met with considerable opposition from the residents of the previously all-white neighborhood.
When the neighbors finally realised - after several attempts, including legal action - that the Coles were not going to be intimidated, they accepted defeat and, ultimately, the Coles as well.
In the mid-1950s, Nat had several mainstream Rock and Roll hits including 'Send For Me', 'With You On My Mind', 'When Rock and Roll Come To Trinidad', and 'Looking Back'.
He often toured Europe and made a command performance before Queen Elizabeth II. He was the first African-American to have his own TV show - the highly-rated The Nat King Cole Show (1954). Cole canceled the show because no company was willing to sponsor the show.
In 1956, Cole was attacked during a concert in Birmingham, Alabama, by six white men from a white supremacist group called the White Citizens Council. He sustained minor injuries to his back.
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 726. Photo: Paramount, 1956.
Breakfast in Hollywood
Nat 'King' Cole appeared in several films. Uncredited, he made his film debut in Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) as a pianist in El Rancho. He performed songs in musicals like Here Comes Elmer (Joseph Santley, 1943), Pin-Up Girl (H. Bruce Humberstone, 1944) starring Betty Grable, and Breakfast in Hollywood (Harold D. Schuster, 1946).
During the 1950s, both the films and his part became bigger, such as in Fritz Lang's Film Noir The Blue Gardenia (1953), Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955), and the war drama China Gate (Samuel Fuller, 1957) with Angie Dickinson.
He played the lead role in St. Louis Blues (Allen Reisner, 1958), a biopic of turn-of-the-century blues composer W. C. Handy. Cole also worked in the European cinema and appeared in the Schlager film Schlager-Raketen/Schlager missiles (Erik Ode, 1960). His last film was the comic Western Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein, 1965), starring Lee Marvin and Jane Fonda.
He was also a composer and his song 'Straighten Up and Fly Right' was sold for $50.00. A heavy smoker, he died of lung cancer in 1965 in Santa Monica, California, USA. He was only 45.
In 1991, his song 'Unforgettable' was made famous again by Cole's daughter Natalie when modern recording technology was used to reunite father and daughter in a duet. The duet version rose to the top of the pop charts, almost forty years after its original popularity.
Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. 3559.
Source: Mike McKinley (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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