I just finished a new mosaic of Nat King Cole. I always liked Nat’s singing, but I did not know about his other accomplishments until I started on his mosaic and started looking up information about him. He started off as a jazz pianist in the 1940’s.
He then started singing and became a very popular singer who crossed racial lines. Straighten Up and Fly Right, Mona Lisa, and Nature Boy were some of his signature tunes in the late 40’s and early 50’s. Nat had a lot of other talents, he was a film actor, TV actor and he was first African American to have a national variety show in 1956.
He had 5 children, two were adopted, his daughter Natalie Cole was a great singer and performer in her own right. What made his accomplishments even more incredible was he did all these things before his untimely death at the age of 46.