M aria Cole, the mother of Natalie Cole, the widow of singing legend Nat “King” Cole, and in her own right a Big Band singer, died Tuesday in Boca Raton, Florida, after a brief battle with cancer, her family announced. She was 89. “Our mom was in a class all by herself,” her three children said in a statement Thursday. “She epitomized, class, elegance, and truly defined what it is to be a real lady. We are so blessed and privileged to have inherited the legacy that she leaves behind along with our father. She died how she lived — with great strength, courage and dignity, surrounded by her loving family.”
Born Maria Hawkins in Boston in 1922, Maria and a sister moved to North Carolina to live with an aunt soon after her mother died in childbirth. She took voice and piano lessons as a child, and after graduating in 1938 from the Palmer Memorial Institute — then one of America’s most prestigious African-American prep schools — she returned to Boston and sang with a jazz orchestra. She soon moved to New York to pursue a music career with jazz great Benny Carter’s band. In 1943, she married Spurgeon Ellington, a Tuskegee Airmen flyer during World War II. He was killed in Georgia two years later during a routine postwar training flight. After performing briefly with Count Basie and swing music innovator Fletcher Henderson, Cole’s big break came when Duke Ellington hired her as a vocalist. She stayed with him until 1946, when she began soloing at New York’s Club Zanzibar as an opening act for The Mills Brothers.
It was there that she met Nat, and they were married on Easter Sunday in 1948 in a lavish ceremony in Harlem. It was only six days after Nat’s divorce from his first wife became final. The two were married for almost 17 years, until the soft-spoken singer died of lung cancer in Santa Monica in February 1965. After her husband’s death, Maria produced a James Baldwin play, sang on The Ed Sullivan Show, created the Cole Cancer Foundation and was active in charity work.
The Coles conceived — Natalie, a nine-time Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter. She was born in 1950 as the Coles’ first child. She was followed by Nat Kelly Cole, adopted in 1959 (death in1995), and the twins Timolin and Casey, who were born in 1961. In 1949, the couple had adopted Carol (known as “Cookie”), the daughter of Maria’s late sister. Cookie passed away in 2009. In addition to her three daughters, survivors include her sister, Charlotte; her son-in-laws Gary and Julian; and six grandchildren. A private service will be held at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles at a date to be determined.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to Nat King Cole Generation Hope Inc. in Boca Raton.
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