Nat King Cole Early singing career
 He was born Nathaniel Adams Coles in Montgomery, Alabama. His birth date, according to the World Almanac, was on Saint Patrick's Day in 1919 ; other sources have erroneously listed his birthdate as 1917. His father was a butcher and a deacon in the Baptist church. His family moved to Chicago, Illinois while he was still a child. There, his father became a minister; Nat's mother Perlina was the church organist. Nat learned to play the organ from his mother until the age of 12, when he began formal lessons. His first performance, at age four, was of Yes, We Have No Bananas. He learned not only jazz and gospel music, but European classical music as well, performing, as he said, from Johann Sebastian Bach to Sergei Rachmaninoff.
The family lived in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. Nat would sneak out of the house and hang outside the clubs, listening to artists such as Louis Armstrong, Earl Fatha Hines, and Jimmie Noone. He participated in Walter Dyett's renowned music program at DuSable High School.
Inspired by the playing of Earl Hines, Cole began his performing career in the mid 1930s while he was still a teenager, and adopted the name Nat Cole. His older brother, Eddie Coles, a bassist, soon joined Nat's band and they first recorded in 1936 under Eddie's name. They were also regular performers at clubs. In fact, Nat got his nickname King performing at one jazz club, a nickname presumably reinforced by the otherwise-unrelated nursery rhyme about Old King Cole. He was also a pianist in a national touring revival of ragtime and Broadway theatre legend, Eubie Blake's revue, Shuffle Along. When it suddenly failed in Long Beach, California, Cole decided to remain there.
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