📍Bronzeville, Chicago, IL, USA
1923 – 1936“I was born Nathaniel Adams Coles in Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1919, and when I was about four my family moved to Chicago, joining the Great Migration north. We lived in Bronzeville, on the South Side, the thriving heart of Black Chicago, full of churches, businesses and nightclubs. My father, Edward, became the minister of True Light Baptist Church, and my mother, Perlina, was the church organist and my first music teacher. I was playing the organ and piano in church as a small boy, and my first performance, at four, was Yes! We Have No Bananas. I learned both gospel and classical music, from Bach to Rachmaninoff. But Bronzeville was full of jazz, and I would sneak out of the house to stand outside the clubs and listen to Louis Armstrong, Jimmie Noone and, above all, Earl Hines, whose piano style I copied. My father would only let me play jazz if I kept playing the organ in church. I played baseball and football too, and I studied music with Walter Dyett at DuSable High School, and by fifteen I had left school to lead my own band, the Rogues of Rhythm, with my brother Eddie. In 1937 I went to Los Angeles, where I formed the King Cole Trio, and our first big hit, Straighten Up and Fly Right, came from one of my father's sermons. I became one of the most beloved singers in the world, with Mona Lisa, Unforgettable and The Christmas Song, and the first Black man to host a national television show. Bronzeville remembers me with a historical marker in the neighbourhood where I grew up.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today