What do you think?
Nat King Cole
Daniel Mark Epstein brings Nat King Cole (1917-1965) and his times to vivid his precocious entrance onto the vibrant jazz scene of his hometown, Chicago; the creation and success of his Trio; the crossover success of such songs as "Straighten Up and Fly Right"; and his years as a pop singer and television star, the first African American to have his own show.
- GenresMusicBiographyNonfiction
438 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
September 8, 2023
I read this biography of Nat King Cole to honor the memory of my mother. She was a fan of Nat Cole, and she and I would watch his TV show together.
This is an excellent biography. It's very comprehensive. It covers his life from birth to death. It provides excellent coverage of his personal and professional life.
In the near future, I will read a book about Jack Benny to honor the memory of my father. I watched Jack Benny's TV show with my dad. Jack Benny and Nat King Cole were good friends.
This is an excellent biography. It's very comprehensive. It covers his life from birth to death. It provides excellent coverage of his personal and professional life.
In the near future, I will read a book about Jack Benny to honor the memory of my father. I watched Jack Benny's TV show with my dad. Jack Benny and Nat King Cole were good friends.
July 14, 2020
There is good news and there is bad news. The bad news is that Nat King Coles life is not THAT interesting or crazy. The good news is that the writer of this biography makes even tax collecting interesting. I mean seriously, chapters were spent talking about Nats tax situation, and it wasn’t even all that bad. He uses scenarios like this one to show what kind of man Nat was, and how others thought of him.
I read biographies of great musical artists to explore their lives. To get to know what kind of person they are, get to know their story. This book does just that. It is a rather thorough look into his life. It strikes the perfect balance of not diving to deep but also not skimming the mere surface of his life.
As I said before this is wonderfully written. There is a constant entertaining pace throughout the whole book. It is written in a way that makes you feel like you really get to know Nat. It feels authentic, it’s real, it never airs on the side of fiction like other biographies do sometimes. This book is also written in a way that makes it easy to keep up with. Most musical biographies can get kind of confusing with all of the various names floating around but I think that the writing of this book makes it incredibly easy to follow along with various characters.
Here are some criticisms of the book-
I think the author was often too kind to Nat. Nat really screwed up sometimes, especially with his affair with Hutton. But Daniel seems to justify a lot of Nats actions.
The author gets a little to complex when describing musical riffs in the book. For those who are not pianists the lingo used would clearly be hard to understand. It just comes off as fluff and it’s paragraphs I would often have to skim over.
The last year or two of Nats life are barely talked about. Daniel mentions how not much is recorded about this portion of his life, but it is still rather a bummer. His relationship with Hutton is rather a pivotal point in the nat king Cole story, but the book doesn’t give too much information on it. Instead Daniel spends an inordinate amount of time focusing on Nats time spent on his death bed. A lot of time. Some of it also seems like page fluff, there are pages full of doctors notes which doesn’t at all seem necessary.
These things are kind of nit picky though.
It seems as though Nat king Coles death saved his life. Which is a weird thing to say, but his terminal cancer helped him realize again what was most important to him. Sad that it had to be death. But it was clear from those close to him that lately he hadn’t been himself... his death bed brought his life back. An oddly beautiful sentiment. An unsurprisingly wonderful book!
I read this and now have a greater appreciation for Nat king Cole. Getting to know the man makes you love his music even more. What a personality, he clearly wasn’t perfect but he was also clearly a very kind, warm, inviting generous man.
I read biographies of great musical artists to explore their lives. To get to know what kind of person they are, get to know their story. This book does just that. It is a rather thorough look into his life. It strikes the perfect balance of not diving to deep but also not skimming the mere surface of his life.
As I said before this is wonderfully written. There is a constant entertaining pace throughout the whole book. It is written in a way that makes you feel like you really get to know Nat. It feels authentic, it’s real, it never airs on the side of fiction like other biographies do sometimes. This book is also written in a way that makes it easy to keep up with. Most musical biographies can get kind of confusing with all of the various names floating around but I think that the writing of this book makes it incredibly easy to follow along with various characters.
Here are some criticisms of the book-
I think the author was often too kind to Nat. Nat really screwed up sometimes, especially with his affair with Hutton. But Daniel seems to justify a lot of Nats actions.
The author gets a little to complex when describing musical riffs in the book. For those who are not pianists the lingo used would clearly be hard to understand. It just comes off as fluff and it’s paragraphs I would often have to skim over.
The last year or two of Nats life are barely talked about. Daniel mentions how not much is recorded about this portion of his life, but it is still rather a bummer. His relationship with Hutton is rather a pivotal point in the nat king Cole story, but the book doesn’t give too much information on it. Instead Daniel spends an inordinate amount of time focusing on Nats time spent on his death bed. A lot of time. Some of it also seems like page fluff, there are pages full of doctors notes which doesn’t at all seem necessary.
These things are kind of nit picky though.
It seems as though Nat king Coles death saved his life. Which is a weird thing to say, but his terminal cancer helped him realize again what was most important to him. Sad that it had to be death. But it was clear from those close to him that lately he hadn’t been himself... his death bed brought his life back. An oddly beautiful sentiment. An unsurprisingly wonderful book!
I read this and now have a greater appreciation for Nat king Cole. Getting to know the man makes you love his music even more. What a personality, he clearly wasn’t perfect but he was also clearly a very kind, warm, inviting generous man.
September 30, 2026
This was a fine biography by Mr. Epstein, with a very readable prose style enameled with fine descriptive language that is not surprising coming from an author who is also a distinguished poet. As the bibliography makes clear, this was an exceedingly well researched work that also benefited from interviews with still-living family and associates by the time of publishing in 1999.
Nat “King” Cole’s story is an amazing American tale of someone born in 1919 into a devout but poor Alabama family who shortly after made the big move to Chicago to pursue opportunities, also a time when live music performance was thoroughly permeating American communities. Learning piano from his mother, Nat early showed a prodigious ability on the keyboard, and by his teens was being showcased against his idol, Earl Hines. The author neatly structured the biography into four parts: Chicago, Los Angeles, America, and This World and the Next. In the first two parts, despite constant work and performing, he and his first wife were living hand to mouth despite the widening recognition of his special talent. It wasn’t until he shifted his focus from his small jazz trio to popular songs delivered in his marvelous vocal style, that finally some monetary success began to accrue (though would be repeatedly subject to jeopardy as the author details).
What is remarkable about Cole is his temperament despite the many headwinds he and his black performer peers faced during the pre and post war years. It was frankly a bit sad to read again and again the barriers to full acceptance thrown in the way of this great American — hotel treatment of black musicians across the entire country, the failure of Madison Avenue to provide him with a sponsor for his top-rated television show that had to be canceled after the one year b/c NBC could not afford to keep paying for out of pocket, the physical attacks in the Deep South, the attempts by the Beverly Hills neighborhood (Hancock Park) to keep this attractive black family out… experiences that hardly seem possible to the modern reader but is important to be reminded that this awful racism and persecution was not so long ago, and why reading history and biography is so important. But Cole never showed public anger or resentment towards this country, he just kept pushing the envelope within his career field to improve the American condition. For this, he was clearly the better man and I am sure his upbringing by his parents had a lot to do with this.
A quick internet search reveals that at the time of his death in 1965, Nat King Cole was one of the most successful recording artists, having sold more records than everyone but Bing Crosby, who to be fair had a big head start when he rose to prominence with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra and in the late 1920s and never looked back. But Cole amazingly recorded over 1400 songs, mostly with Capitol Records, whose original building was also known as “the house that Nat built.”
Today, most Americans are probably familiar with Nat “King” Cole because of his astonishingly great Christmas recordings, especially “The Christmas Song” that is routinely heard every holiday season. His daughter Natalie revisited her father’s catalog in the 1990s with “Unforgettable With Love” that became a stunning hit. Diana Krall and others have also shared their own homages to the great jazz pianist and singer.
Daniel Mark Epstein did a marvelous job covering the life and career of Nat “King” Cole, and in deserves great credit for helping to keep the great man’s memory alive. Very recommended.
Read
January 11, 2022Nat King Cole es uno de los cantantes favoritos de mi padre y crecí escuchando su voz suave y melodiosa.
Definitivamente leer sobre su vida, contada por Daniel Mark Epstein, hecha luz sobre muchas cosas que no conocía y algunas otros cosas que sí. Se trata de un trabajo de investigación profunda y una narración muy balanceada para presentarnos a un personaje que -aunque nos duela- es un humano: está lo bueno, lo malo y lo feo. Aunque las primeras páginas gozan de una vitalidad y un atractivo inmediatos, es cierto que por momentos el volumen se hace un poco largo en detalles sobre presentaciones y espectáculos, quizás no todos tan relevantes, aunque carezco de conocimiento como para ponderarlo.
Está el Nat King Cole precoz prodigio musical, el enamorado joven, el músico muerto de hambre, el músico en la cúspide de la fama que no sabe manejar el dinero y termina debiéndole miles de dólares al estado. El infiel. El fumador empedernido. Padre, hombre de negocios, a veces descabellados.
Particularmente son muy interesantes los episodios que lidian con el rol cumplido por Nat King Cole en el Estados Unidos de la segregación racial, contra la que el cantante luchó, de manera tibia para algunos. En el panorama actual es más que importante revisar esas discusiones, que no se distancian tanto de los debates sobre cómo ejercer el activismo hoy en día (lamentablemente, a veces todavía sobre la misma cuestión del racismo). El capítulo sobre el intento de secuestro y el dedicado a la pionera incursión televisiva de Cole son muy relevantes para pensar estos temas. Particularmente triste cómo la sociedad estaba más preparada para ver a un presentador afroamericano en TV que los publicistas para reconocer el cambio de los tiempos.
También me encuentro con el personaje de Maria Cole, representando el prototipo de la mujer de los cincuenta en gran parte de sus dichos y formas de pensar, pero que deja su impronta como una persona de una enorme fortaleza.
Definitivamente leer sobre su vida, contada por Daniel Mark Epstein, hecha luz sobre muchas cosas que no conocía y algunas otros cosas que sí. Se trata de un trabajo de investigación profunda y una narración muy balanceada para presentarnos a un personaje que -aunque nos duela- es un humano: está lo bueno, lo malo y lo feo. Aunque las primeras páginas gozan de una vitalidad y un atractivo inmediatos, es cierto que por momentos el volumen se hace un poco largo en detalles sobre presentaciones y espectáculos, quizás no todos tan relevantes, aunque carezco de conocimiento como para ponderarlo.
Está el Nat King Cole precoz prodigio musical, el enamorado joven, el músico muerto de hambre, el músico en la cúspide de la fama que no sabe manejar el dinero y termina debiéndole miles de dólares al estado. El infiel. El fumador empedernido. Padre, hombre de negocios, a veces descabellados.
Particularmente son muy interesantes los episodios que lidian con el rol cumplido por Nat King Cole en el Estados Unidos de la segregación racial, contra la que el cantante luchó, de manera tibia para algunos. En el panorama actual es más que importante revisar esas discusiones, que no se distancian tanto de los debates sobre cómo ejercer el activismo hoy en día (lamentablemente, a veces todavía sobre la misma cuestión del racismo). El capítulo sobre el intento de secuestro y el dedicado a la pionera incursión televisiva de Cole son muy relevantes para pensar estos temas. Particularmente triste cómo la sociedad estaba más preparada para ver a un presentador afroamericano en TV que los publicistas para reconocer el cambio de los tiempos.
También me encuentro con el personaje de Maria Cole, representando el prototipo de la mujer de los cincuenta en gran parte de sus dichos y formas de pensar, pero que deja su impronta como una persona de una enorme fortaleza.
Read
April 3, 2021This was pretty good, clued me onto a few facts about Nat (he saved Sinatra's career and maybe his life) and showed how he walked the line between skilled jazz musician and popular crooner.
But every so often the author will write sections of it almost like a novel. He switches to what seem like transcripts of conversations that he wouldn't have been party (occasionally with the inner monologue of Nat or someone else present) e.g. "'blah blah' said Nat as he scratched the underside of his chin with the back of his nails" it's like, how do you know he said what he said and scratched his chin?
I mean I imagine he's doing it as a slightly more interesting narrative device than just saying "this happened and then this happened and then this happened" but the back and forth between that style and the straighter biography approach irked me slightly and took me out of the book.
That gripe aside though, I mostly enjoyed it. As I've said elsewhere, for me one of the signs of a good artist bio/autobio/memoir is that it makes me want to check out or revisit their art. This book has definitely seen some Nat King Cole items added to my music collection.
But every so often the author will write sections of it almost like a novel. He switches to what seem like transcripts of conversations that he wouldn't have been party (occasionally with the inner monologue of Nat or someone else present) e.g. "'blah blah' said Nat as he scratched the underside of his chin with the back of his nails" it's like, how do you know he said what he said and scratched his chin?
I mean I imagine he's doing it as a slightly more interesting narrative device than just saying "this happened and then this happened and then this happened" but the back and forth between that style and the straighter biography approach irked me slightly and took me out of the book.
That gripe aside though, I mostly enjoyed it. As I've said elsewhere, for me one of the signs of a good artist bio/autobio/memoir is that it makes me want to check out or revisit their art. This book has definitely seen some Nat King Cole items added to my music collection.
March 31, 2019
Nat King Cole - lived, made great music, cheated on his wife, smoked too much and then died. Epstein pretty much covers it all. An okay book but nothing great.
May 17, 2022
What a wonderful detailed book on the life & career of the great Nat King Cole. I have always loved his voice but knew precious little about the man. Thanks Daniel, for your work.
June 16, 2022
Nat King Cole is my favorite artist, but this was not my favorite book. It was well researched, but redundant.
July 27, 2022
DID NOT LIKE THE WRITING STYLE BUT LOVE NAT KING COLE
May 16, 2025
A little hard to get through for me.
September 26, 2013
This book starts freshly with an evocative narrative episode with young Cole in a competition with the more established Earl Hines. Epstein uses this technique a few times in the book and the departure from the standard biographical structure is nicely done. He may take some liberties but the episodes feel grounded enough. He tries to be balanced in his assessment of Cole's character but leans toward the positive. I had wondered about the people Cole left behind as they are not mentioned in body of work but he does do a recap at the end of the book. This is a good biography and I only have a couple of quibbles. One, he clearly had access to more photos because he describes them in the prose but the selection is small (but well chosen). Two the end of the book, when Nat is in the hospital, felt a bit like he ceded authorial control to Cole's wife and lost his objectivity. The pace changes and the weight given to that time in his life felt overdone. Many biographers would have tidied that section up in far fewer pages but Epstein almost makes a dramatic piece out of it. It felt unnecessarily long. I also expected a discography and that wasn't provided. Given the attention he gives to the albums, that was a surprise.
March 16, 2015
Nat King Cole by Daniel Mark Epstein
Born in Alabama and raised in Chicago, Nat moved away from the church his father preached at and became a teen jazz sensation with his trio. Later on Nat moved away from his first marriage and his jazz trio to become a world famous pop vocalist and the first African American to have a television show but still had to deal with harsh criticism and racism. However he was not a saint and this book shows even the most popular and beloved entertainers also have a life outside the spotlight.
I recently read Ravi Howard’s novel Driving the King loosely based on Nat King Cole’s life and that sparked my interest to read this very good biography of the famous musician and singer. He was a groundbreaking artist, starting as a teen jazz pianist leading his trio and becoming a great pop vocalist as well as being the first African American to have his own television show which unfortunately was short lived as he could not find a sponsor. His calm and cool demeanor must have been very difficult to contain the inner turmoil he must have been feeling at times.
Born in Alabama and raised in Chicago, Nat moved away from the church his father preached at and became a teen jazz sensation with his trio. Later on Nat moved away from his first marriage and his jazz trio to become a world famous pop vocalist and the first African American to have a television show but still had to deal with harsh criticism and racism. However he was not a saint and this book shows even the most popular and beloved entertainers also have a life outside the spotlight.
I recently read Ravi Howard’s novel Driving the King loosely based on Nat King Cole’s life and that sparked my interest to read this very good biography of the famous musician and singer. He was a groundbreaking artist, starting as a teen jazz pianist leading his trio and becoming a great pop vocalist as well as being the first African American to have his own television show which unfortunately was short lived as he could not find a sponsor. His calm and cool demeanor must have been very difficult to contain the inner turmoil he must have been feeling at times.
December 20, 2007
The best and most authoritative bio of the jazz singer and pianist. I've been reading and rereading this A LOT in prep for a book I hope to do NKC. I like Epstein's style of biography---he's personable without being intrusive, and he has clever ways of staging multiple interpretations of events and conflicting accounts. If there's one disappointment here it's not Epstein's but NKC's: he was such a guarded personality that there's no real drama of personality. But that's a minor quibble---the book is informative enough to sustain interest.
December 22, 2011
Exhaustive biography of the singer. I learned so much. If you are a musician you will understand better than I just how innovative he truly was. I think the author fawns a little too much, while the context he tries to create around the emergence of cigarettes as a health hazard is clumsy. Very informative.
June 9, 2010
Excellent biography of Nat King Cole.
April 6, 2014
A great read about a great musician and singer - learned alot about his early piano progeny years and his tragic end. Recommended!
August 6, 2014
Insightful & Deeply Moving!
December 3, 2015
great story albeit sad. the toll of fame told yet again. sorry i was not around to hear this great talent. his story lives on in his wonderful music.
December 9, 2016
A wonderful biography about a classic singer/performer - Nate King Cole. Very detailed and thoroughly enjoyable. Highly Recommended!
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews