This page contains Nat King Cole songs, albums and video links. Music profile for Nat King Cole with events, tracks, videos, pictures, lyrics and band information.
Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was a popular United States|American jazz singer-songwriter and pianist.
Cole first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist, then switched his emphasis to singing, becoming one of the most popular and best known vocalists of all time.{{Fact|date=April 2008
Childhood and Chicago
Cole was born in Montgomery, Alabama|Montgomery, Alabama. His birth date, according to the World Almanac, was on Saint Patrick's Day in 1919;<ref>[http://www.nat-king-cole.org/biography.html Nat King Cole Society<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> other sources have erroneously listed his birthdate as 1917. His father was a preacher in the Baptist church. His family moved to Chicago, Illinois, while he was still a child. There, his father became a minister; Nat's mother, Perlina, was the church organist. Nat learned to play the Organ (music)|organ from his mother until the age of 12, when he began formal lessons. His first performance, at age four, was of ''Yes, We Have No Bananas.'' He learned not only jazz and gospel music, but European classical music as well, performing, as he said, "from Johann Sebastian Bach to Sergei Rachmaninoff."
The family lived in the Douglas, Chicago#Bronzeville|Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. Nat would sneak out of the h... read all