Natalie Maria Cole (February 6, 1950 – December 31, 2015) was an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Cole was the daughter of American singer and jazz pianist Nat King Cole. She rose to success in the mid-1970s as an R&B singer with the hits “This Will Be“, “Inseparable” (1975), and “Our Love” (1977). She returned as a pop singer on the 1987 album Everlasting and her cover of Bruce Springsteen‘s “Pink Cadillac“. In the 1990s, she sang traditional pop by her father, resulting in her biggest success, Unforgettable… with Love, which sold over seven million copies and won her seven Grammy Awards. She sold over 30 million records worldwide. On December 31, 2015, Cole died at the age of 65 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, due to congestive heart failure.

Natalie Cole was born at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles, to American singer and jazz pianist Nat King Cole and former Duke EllingtonOrchestra singer Maria Hawkins Ellington, and raised in the affluent Hancock Park district of Los Angeles. Regarding her childhood, Cole referred to her family as “the black Kennedys” and was exposed to many great singers of jazz, soul and blues. At the age of 6, Natalie sang on her father’s Christmas album The Magic of Christmas and later started performing at age 11.