The son of a Baptist minister, Nat was born Nathaniel Adams Coles in Montgomery, Alabama, on 17 March 1917 but from 1921 grew up in Chicago. Keenly interested in the piano as a child (his brothers Eddie, Isaac and Freddy also became musicians) he was encouraged by his choir-mistress mother. He first played by ear but later, at high school, embarked on more serious study with the musical educators Walter Dyett and N. Clark Smith. At twelve Nat played the organ at his father’s church and was steeped in classical piano repertoire ‘from Bach to Rachmaninoff ’. But he was also strongly drawn to jazz and improvising at the piano and in 1934, while still at school, fronted his first band. By 1936 he had already cut his first record (for Decca) with his bass-player brother Eddie Cole’s Solid Swingers. Influenced from more than one direction, at this stage Nat’s playing already combined the economical pulse of Basie’s left-hand with the intricacy of Earl Hines’ right and his own groups, the Rogues of Rhythm and Twelve Royal Dukes, regularly featured Hines’ arrangements.

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