Today it has been forty years since the voice of Nat King Cole was silenced.
I have always been a fan of his music. He had a voice that reached out to touch your soul. I would have to say he had a voice which would make angels weep and saints deny their god. He was also a genius at the piano, his interpretations were to music what Michelangelo's paintings were to art. Truly this man had been gifted by God.
He also had a gentle heart. Members of a white supremacist group attacked and tried to kidnap him at a show in Birmingham Alabama. He finished the show and apologized to the audience for the disturbance. This got him a reputation as an "Uncle Tom". Thurgood Marshall even referred to him as such. He endured harassment when he and his family settled into an all white neighborhood. He refused to perform at segregated establishments.
Many questioned his handling of all these things. Perhaps he knew that you can't change the way people think without changing their heart. Just because one doesn't holler and scream doesn't signal acceptance. Sometimes the quiet and steady working for change is best. In his own way he made just as big an impact as Martin Luther King.
Maybe he knew as he had sung "the greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return" -Nature Boy
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