ent001034-007

NAT KING COLE - Biography - Page 6 figure in a field where a tune can become an overnight smash -- and plummet into obscurity just as rapidly. One columnist, San Francisco's Ralph Gleason, has remarked that Nat's records "are practically legal tender. For one thing," he added, "it's a style. He always sounds like Nat Cole and can be recognized immediately. For another, there's a ring of sincerity in everything he does that makes you want to hear him again and again," He received great personal gratification by being chosen by Paramount Studios to portray the role of the late W. C. Handy, famed composer and "father of the blues," in the filmed dramatization of his life, "St. Louis Blues." Despite the disparity in their ages, Cole and the beloved, blind composer were close friends. Many entertainment figures, who command astronomical fees for TV guest shots, appeared on his TV show a couple of seasons ago -- for the minimum scale -- in an effort to keep his program on the air. It was neither their fault nor Nat's that the show went off, to the disap- pointment of a vast home audience of Cole fans. Since March 28, 1948, Nat has been happily married to the former Maria Ellington, whom he met when she was singing with the Duke Ellington band (no relation) at the Club Zanzibar, in New York, and he was in the floor show there. They live in Los Angeles, in a handsome, ?╟≤ ?╟≤ ?╜ more