Singer Natalie Cole dies, aged 65

R&B singer Natalie Cole, the daughter of the legendary Nat King Cole, has died at the age of 65.

Her biggest hits were This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) and Unforgettable, which was a virtual duet with her late father. Another father-daughter duet version of When I Fall in Love won the singer a Grammy in 1996 for best pop collaboration with vocals. An album, Still Unforgettable, won another Grammy for best traditional pop vocal album of 2008.

Natalie was only 15 when Nat King Cole passed away in 1965, ten years before she embarked on her recording career.Her mother was the one-time Duke Ellington Orchestra singer Maria Hawkins Ellington. At the age of six, Natalie sang on her father’s Christmas album. At the age of she was performing indepedently of her father.

Miss You Like Crazy was a massive hit for Cole in 1989, becoming her fifth Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song also topped both the R&B and adult contemporary charts, as well as reaching number 2 on the UK Singles Chart.

“Natalie Cole, sister beloved & of substance and sound. May her soul rest in peace,” tweeted the Rev. Jesse Jackson today, New Year’s Day.

Tony Bennett tweeted: " I am deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Natalie Cole, as I have cherished the long friendship I had with her, her father Nat, and the family over the years. Natalie was an exceptional jazz singer and it was an honor to have recorded and performed with her on several occasions. She was a lovely and generous person who will be greatly missed."

"Rest In Power to the queen, " tweeted Earth, Wind & Fire.

Cole had suffered from a number of health issues in recent times and died on Thursday night, with the cause of death believed to be congestive heart failure. Cole has received chemotherapy to treat hepatitis and within four months, had suffered kidney failure, as she told CNN’s Larry King in 2009.

The singer required dialysis three times a week until she received a donor kidney in May of that year. She developed addictions to heroin, crack cocaine and alcohol and spent a period of six months in rehab in 1983.

Cole won nine Grammy Awards in the course of her career, but was obliged to cancel a number of concert performances during the last twelve weeks. This was due to a recurrence of hepatitis C connected with earlier drug abuse.

"She liked white music – first, the kind her daddy, Nat "King" Cole sang, and then rock & roll, the kind she heard Janis Joplin perform at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, " according to Rolling Stone in 1977. "Then one day, away from home and in college, she heard about blacks – black studies and Black Panthers – and decided to become one."

After the huge success of the break-through single, This Will Be, she would enjoy five hit singles, three gold albums, three Grammy awards and a Rock Award in the space of just two years.

At the age of 27 - as she was in 1977- the feisty performer was still insisting that she was not the New Queen of Soul. Indeed, some years earlier she had roundly reprimanded the emcee who introduced her as that at L.A.'s Coconut Grove.

The singer pictured with Johnny Mathis at Mercedes-Benz Presents The Carousel Of Hope Ball in October 2014

A measure of her early success can be garnered from the fact that at the time of the Rolling Stone interview, she had recently bought what was described as "a wide-open ranch of a house" in Benedict Canyon, in the mountains overlooking Beverly Hills.

"I've heard strains of Aretha, but I've never heard no Diana Ross, " she told the magazine, examining her voice for comparisons. "We don't sound anything alike. I think that I sound a lot better than Diana Ross. You have to excuse my frankness, but I'm serious. There aren't too many artists that I would want to put myself up against, but I'll put myself up against Diana any day."

She was proud as punch of having appeared on a Frank Sinatra TV special. At the end of the show, Sinatra told her she was a pro, a superstar, which she thought "was really beautiful because he's seen 'em all."