L O V E Nat King Cole Quotes & Sayings

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

It's important to me that on 'Family Feud' I could kiss all the people. It sounds crazy but when I first came here Petula Clark was on a show with Nat King Cole and he kissed her on the cheek and eighty-one stations in the South canceled him. I kissed black women daily and nightly on 'Family Feud' and the world didn't come to an end, did it? — Richard Dawson

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

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

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

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

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

By 1950, Brennan was settling into a schedule that saw him making three films a year, giving him more time on his ranch and with a new business he started in Joseph, a 487-seat movie theater that opened on July 27, 1950. It was housed in a Quonset hut made out of surplus war materials also used to build the civic center. "The reason he got the theater built," Mike recalled, "was because the civic center was the same size, and they [Frank McCully and Walter] got the chance to buy two of them for half the price." At the theater's grand opening, actors Chill Wills and Forrest Tucker said a few words and signed autographs, and Joseph's mayor and other local dignitaries attended the event. A La Grande radio station broadcast the event. Curtain Call at Cactus Creek was the feature, following a musical short with the Nat King Cole trio. — Carl Rollyson

Unforgettable in every way, and forever more, that's how you'll stay. — Nat King Cole

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

Primarily I'm a meat man, although once in a while I toy with a few vegetables. — Nat King Cole

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

Nat King Cole was a really big influence. — Bryan White

Only time, education and plenty of good schooling will make anti-segregation work. — Nat King Cole

I'm an interpreter of stories. When I perform it's like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories. — Nat King Cole

I am an American citizen and feel I am entitled to the same rights as any other citizen. — Nat King Cole

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

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

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

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

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

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

You've got to change with the public's taste. — Nat King Cole

'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.

It's not the people in the South who create racial problems - it's the people who are governing. — Nat King Cole

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

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

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

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

I used to sing like Nat King Cole. I mean he was the guy when I was comin' up, and you know, man, people used to say of me, "Damn, he sure do sound like Nat King Cole." But there was a day, and luckily for me it was early, when I woke up and asked myself, "Well, when are the ask me to sing because I sound like me?" So my advice is, never do anything that you don't like. — Ray Charles