Tributes paid to singer Natalie Cole, who has died aged 65

Grammy producer Ken Ehrlich remembered Cole as having “one of those magical voices that grabbed you from the first note”. She began her career as an R and B singer, but later gravitated toward the smooth pop and jazz standards that her father loved.

Natalie Cole holds the best instrumental arrangement accompanying vocalist award backstage at the 51st Annual Grammy Awards, in Los Angeles.

The cause was “ongoing health issues”, her family said. Their brother, Nat Kelly Cole, died in 1995. “She fought for so long”. She was a legend. She had some rough times in the years that followed, sometimes making her own name in all the wrong ways, with drugs and drink. She was attending boarding school in MA when he died of lung cancer in 1965. He had heard her sing informally at parties.

Cole, who had an estimated net worth of $5million, started her music career at the age of six – before dropping her debut album Inseparable in 1975, which contained two chart-topping singles, “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)’ and ‘Inseparable“, and won her the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

Cole spent the Christmas holidays with her sisters, however, they were not by her side at the time of her death. We shall never forget her defiant rendition of “Pink Cadillac” at the London concert in celebration of our former president Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday in 1988 at a time when he was still in prison and when apartheid repression was still at its height.

Cole’s career spanned five decades in the R&B, soul, jazz and pop genres.

“I didn’t shed really any real tears until the album was over”, Cole told The Associated Press in 1991. I love Adele. I’m listening to a lot of Spanish music too. There were reports that she’d been hospitalized last month, but somehow we’d thought she’d find a way to pull through again. It featured a duet (‘Unforgettable’) with her father. “I owed that to him”.

Bowlegged Lou of multiplatinum selling singing group/production team Full Force displayed a heartwarming photo of Natalie and her father, Nat King Cole, on his Facebook wall.

Cole portrayed herself in “Livin’ for Love: The Natalie Cole Story”, a 2000 television movie that depicted her drug addiction.

Even then, despite her struggles, she was a determined performer.

A rehab stint in 1983 turned her life around, she said. She was always so kind & exuded so much grace.

Some may refer to Natalie’s singing as angelic. Robert Yancy was her only child. Cole became a spokesperson for the University Kidney Research Organization, a group dedicated to eradicating kidney disease.