Nat King Cole Was Born Here

On March seventeenth, nineteen nineteen, a child named Nathaniel Adams Coles was born in Montgomery. His father, Edward Coles, was a Baptist minister at Beulah Baptist Church. His mother, Perlina, sang in the choir. When Nathaniel was four years old, the family moved to Chicago.

In Chicago he studied piano, played organ in his father's church, and by his early teens was performing in jazz clubs. He formed the King Cole Trio in nineteen thirty-seven and built a following through radio broadcasts and recordings. Straighten Up and Fly Right reached number one on the R and B charts in nineteen forty-four.

Cole was the first Black entertainer to host a nationally broadcast American television program, The Nat King Cole Show on NBC, which ran from nineteen fifty-six to nineteen fifty-seven. Sponsors refused to support it nationally because networks in the South would not carry a program hosted by a Black man. The show was cancelled after forty-two episodes. Cole said, in a line that has been widely quoted and is attributed to him in contemporary press accounts, that Madison Avenue was afraid of the dark.

In nineteen fifty-six, while performing in Birmingham, Alabama, Cole was attacked on stage by several white men who rushed from the audience and struck him. He was not seriously injured. The attackers were members of a White Citizens' Council group opposed to rock and roll and what they called racial mixing in popular music.

Cole continued performing and recording until his death from lung cancer in February nineteen sixty-five. He was forty-five. The house on Saint John Street in Montgomery where he was born carries a historical marker. Montgomery has since recognized him as one of the most significant musicians the city produced.