Nat King Cole
American singer and jazz pianist (1919–1965)
Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American singer, jazz pianist, and actor. Cole's career as a jazz and pop vocalist started in the late 1930s and spanned almost three decades, during which he found success and recorded over 100 songs that became hits on the pop charts.
Cole began his career as a jazz pianist in the late 1930s, when he formed the King Cole Trio, which became the top-selling group (and the only black act) on Capitol Records in the 1940s. Cole's trio was the model for small jazz ensembles that followed. Starting in 1950, he transitioned to become a solo singer billed as Nat King Cole. Despite achieving mainstream success, Cole faced intense racial discrimination during his career. While not a major vocal public figure in the civil rights movement, Cole was a member of his local NAACP branch and participated in the 1963 March on Washington. He regularly performed for civil rights organizations. From 1956 to 1957, Cole hosted the NBC variety series The Nat King Cole Show, which became the first nationally broadcast television show hosted by a Black American.
Some of Cole's most notable singles include "Unforgettable", "Smile", "A Blossom Fell", "Nature Boy", "When I Fall in Love", "Let There Be Love", "Mona Lisa", "Autumn Leaves", "Stardust", "Straighten Up and Fly Right", "The Very Thought of You", "For Sentimental Reasons", "Embraceable You" "Almost Like Being in Love", and "L-O-V-E".
“Nat King Cole” enters the record as american singer and jazz pianist (1919–1965). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what King, Cole and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Nat King Cole” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, King, Cole and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q137042. VIAF identifies the subject as 34642861. The Library of Congress control number is n84072857. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 1965, 1950 and 1963.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nat King Cole” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.