Nat King Quotes

#1. I love Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder, Brandi, Sade, Nat King Cole. I like the Beatles. I listen to a lot of that.

Leah LaBelle

#2. Probably more than anybody else, I loved Nat 'King' Cole as a performer - not only his singing but his piano playing. Whenever he had a new record come out, I'd get it and try to learn how he was playing. And he was one of the nicest people I'd ever met.

Bruce Forsyth

#3. I love all holiday music. My two favorites would probably be Donny Hathaway's "This Christmas" and Nat King Cole's "The Christmas Song." They epitomize Christmas for me. Those two recordings will never be touched. That's why I've never redone them.

Mariah Carey

#4. I love the music from Nat King Cole, BB King, Albert King ... When I think of it, I wouldn't mind being renamed Angus King.

Angus Young

#5. I can laugh at myself because I've had to. Everything would have been much worse if I'd been the singing son of Nat 'King' Cole.

Natalie Cole

#6. I worked in a barbershop. I used to make the waves in the brother's hair, you know? Like, Nat King Cole, Sugar Ray Robinson.

George Clinton

#7. 'The Christmas Song,' by Nat King Cole, is not only a masterful performance; to me it just sounds like the holidays. I've never sung it, because Nat's version is so perfect. I gotta leave it alone.

Harry Connick Jr.

#8. I was a 12 year old kid in Northern Idaho listening to Billie Holiday and Lena Horne and Sarah Vaughan and Nat King Cole. This whole genre of music is a part of who I am.

Cheyenne Jackson

#9. I'll never totally get away from being who I am, which first, to many, is the daughter of Nat King Cole, which became even more intensified with the 'Unforgettable' album.

Natalie Cole

#10. Johnny Mercer started Capitol Records, and he brought in Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole. He just let them sing whatever they wanted, and it became the best record company in America.

Tony Bennett

#11. Most of us remember Nat King Cole as a vocalist. His warm, grainy baritone is still so closely identified with such familiar ballads as 'Stardust' and 'The Christmas Song' that it's hard to imagine anyone else performing them.

Terry Teachout

#12. My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

Mose Allison

#13. Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Paul Whiteman, Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra, Lionel Hampton, the Mills Brothers, Woody Herman, and Nat King Cole. "Mona Lisa, men have named you,

George Hodgman

#14. I was brought up with beautiful music - Nat King Cole and Glen Miller from my dad, and my mum loved Judy Garland and Doris Day - brilliant stuff. Through my brothers and sisters I heard David Bowie and The Specials, The Carpenters, Meatloaf and The Rolling Stones.

Imelda May

#15. I considered Nat King Cole to be a friend and, in many ways, a mentor. He always had words of profound advice.

Diahann Carroll

#16. Nat King Cole was a really big influence.

Bryan White

#17. Of the great singing stars of the 1940s and '50s, only one - Nat King Cole - died young, at age 45.

Robert Gottlieb

#18. My dad's family were political and he was always a theatrical creature, whereas my mum is really musical and her father was the touring pianist with Nat King Cole. My family was an explosive mixture of politics, religion and music - no wonder I turned out how I did.

Grace Jones

#19. My mom was an amazing singer and music was a big part of my life, so I grew up listening to Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Henry Mancini; I used to watch 'The Andy Williams Show' on TV. I was very musical, so I was watching stuff that most kids my age wouldn't be interested in.

Gloria Estefan

#20. I ordered a coffee and a little something to eat and savored the warmth and dryness. Somewhere in the background Nat King Cole sang a perky tune. I watched the rain beat down on the road outside and told myself that one day this would be twenty years ago.

Bill Bryson

#21. I'm an old soul. I like the Nat King Cole; Sam Cooke is my favorite singer of all time. But I'm into neo-soul; I'm into R&B. Some of the modern stuff appeals to me, but most of it comes from an older time.

Trai Byers

#22. My favorite singer to this day is Nat King Cole. I've tried to emulate his phrasing. It is so absolutely beautiful to listen to his lovely voice.

Johnny Mathis

#23. I respected Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. Those were my heroes, and they were 10 years older than I was.

Tony Bennett

#24. Also, I'd like to play an athlete again, while I'm still physically fit, or a musician, like Nat King Cole, because I play the trumpet and sing. I'd like to incorporate that into a character.

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje

#25. People don't slip. Time catches up with them.

Nat King Cole

#26. The only sport I'm not interested in is horse racing. That's because I don't know the horses personally.

Nat King Cole

#27. I may be helping to bring harmony between people through my music.

Nat King Cole

#28. Primarily I'm a meat man, although once in a while I toy with a few vegetables.

Nat King Cole

#29. Only time, education and plenty of good schooling will make anti-segregation work.

Nat King Cole

#30. In 1965, as Ralph Gleason has reported, when Martin Luther King's march on Selma, Alabama, was brutally attacked by local and state constabulary, Louis Armstrong, then in Copenhagen, said after watching the carnage on television, "They would beat Jesus if he was black and marched.

Nat Hentoff

#31. The Supreme Court is having a hard time integrating schools. What chance do I have to integrate audiences?

Nat King Cole

#32. I'm proud of our court. It knocks back a lot of the propaganda the Communists put out about the way America treats her Negroes.

Nat King Cole

#33. The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.

Nat King Cole

#34. Ruth does love Jesus, same way she loves Lincoln, Robin Hood, Martin Luther King, and Nat. Handsome men who fight for justice.

Samantha Hunt

#35. I can't bear to see myself even in movies. The feeling is complex. I can't stand the sight of myself.

Nat King Cole

#36. I'm a businessman. I work for business people. The kind of thing they say is: Now we've sold a lot of records, let's sell some more.

Nat King Cole

#37. Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.

Nat King Cole

#38. If you smile through your fear and sorrow, smile and maybe tomorrow you'll see the sun come shining through for you.

Nat King Cole

#39. I ... started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that's just the way it came out.

Nat King Cole

#40. I'm not playing for other musicians. We're trying to reach the guy who works all day and wants to spend a buck at night. We'll keep him happy.

Nat King Cole

#41. Unforgettable in every way, and forever more, that's how you'll stay.

Nat King Cole

#42. I'm an interpreter of stories. When I perform it's like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories.

Nat King Cole

#43. I often wonder whether Negroes like myself who are pretty well known help out at all in breaking down barriers.

Nat King Cole

#44. I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist.

Nat King Cole

#45. For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

Nat King Cole

#46. You've got to change with the public's taste.

Nat King Cole

#47. Critics don't buy records. They get 'em free.

Nat King Cole

#48. I am an American citizen and feel I am entitled to the same rights as any other citizen.

Nat King Cole

#49. I felt something impossible for me to explain in words. Then, when they took her away, it hit me. I got scared all over again and began to feel giddy. Then it came to me ... I was a father.

Nat King Cole

#50. There's just one thing I can't figure out. My income tax!

Nat King Cole

#51. I'm a musician at heart, I know I'm not really a singer. I couldn't compete with real singers. But I sing because the public buys it.

Nat King Cole

#52. Get me well so I can get on television and tell people to stop smoking.

Nat King Cole

#53. I make no claim to being a business genius. You can make so much money in this business that it loses its value.

Nat King Cole

#54. The sheriff is at the cash register, and if I don't get a hit soon, I don't know what I'll do.

Nat King Cole

#55. I'm in the music business for one purpose - to make money.

Nat King Cole

#56. It's not the people in the South who create racial problems - it's the people who are governing.

Nat King Cole

#57. If I could read it, I could play it.

Nat King Cole

#58. I was a guinea pig for some hoodlums who thought they could hurt me and frighten me and keep other Negro entertainers from the South.

Nat King Cole

#59. Music is emotional, and you may catch a musician in a very unemotional mood or you may not be in the same frame of mind as the musician. So a critic will often say a musician is slipping.

Nat King Cole

#60. I got the message. All of us get the message, sooner or later. If you get it before it's too late or before you're too old, you'll pull through all right.

Nat King Cole

#61. The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you've got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.

Nat King Cole

#62. The only prejudice I've found anywhere in TV is in some advertising agencies, and there isn't so much prejudice as just fear.

Nat King Cole

#63. Although it's been said many times, many ways ... Merry Christmas to you!

Nat King Cole