American musician, band leader, and popular entertainer of the 1940s and 1950s.
He was the youngest son of Rev. Edward Coles and Perlina (Adams) Coles in Montgomery, Alabama. At the age of four, Cole demonstrated his natural gift for the piano. At five, his family moved to Chicago so his father could be the pastor of the True Light Baptist Church. He grew up in a musical family and his mother directing the church choir. At the age of 12, Cole played the organ in church and took piano lessons at home playing Bach to Rachmaninoff. While he went to Phillips High School in Chicago, he organized a jazz band earning $1.50 a night.
The jazz music of Chicago was a major influence on his musical life and the piano jazz of Earl Hines inspired Cole to develop his own piano style. In 1934, he was a band leader of “The Royal Dukes” with the participation of his three musician brothers. He was first recorded as vocalist and pianist in a band lead by his brother Eddie in 1936. After touring in a review, Cole was left stranded in Los Angeles. In 1937, he took various piano jobs in small clubs than organized his own trio, “The King Cole Trio.”
The cool jazz sounds of the “King Cole Trio” was establishing their hot reputations among jazz enthusiasts around Los Angeles. The trio toured the country and in 1943 they were signed with Capitol Records to a recording contract. The song, “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” became a national hit in 1944 and soon Cole followed that song with hit after hit of standards. He scored a big hit with Christmas favorite “The Christmas Song,” in 1946. His fame was not limited to the United States. He performed on the international stage and with all-star jazz groups in the ’40s. By the 1950s, Cole dropped the piano and focused on his vocalist talents. In 1956, he had his own TV variety show where many of his music friends appeared such as Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and Pearl Bailey. At this time, he signed a three-year contract with the Sands in Las Vegas for three weeks work at $500,000. In 1964, he performed for President Lyndon Johnson at the White House.
He married dancer Nadine Robinson in 1937 and divorced in 1946. In 1948, he met and married singer Marie Ellington, a member of the Duke Ellington (no relation) band. Their daughter Natalie Marie was born in 1949 and they also adopted Marie’s niece Carol to raise. They had one son, Kelly and then twin girls, Casey and Timolin. In 1948, Cole purchased a mansion in wealthy Hancock Park in Los Angeles. Neighbors in the exclusive area protested the sale of the house to a Negro. Cole refused to be intimidated by his neighbors and soon the furor died down.
Cole was an avid Los Angeles Dodgers fan and golf enthusiast. He loved to drive his daughter Natalie around in his XKE Jaguar sports car. A gentle, mild mannered and sometimes melancholy man, he loved to sing with his butter-smooth voice. He had brown eyes, black hair and stood 6 ft tall.
He was concerned with the issue of equality in the civil rights movement and became a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. On 11 April 1956, Cole was attacked by six men while performing in Birmingham, Alabama. He sustained a slight back injury and the four of his attackers received sentences and fines. He sued many hotel chains in order to be allowed to stay in their suites where he was the evening headline act.
Cole suffered from stomach ulcers and in 1953 during a concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall he collapsed. After his performance at the White House in 1964, Cole was diagnosed with lung cancer. A chain-smoker his whole life Cole’s last engagement was in 1964. He died at dawn from lung cancer on 15 February 1965 in Santa Monica, California.
Link to Wikipedia biography