Singer Natalie Cole. AP FILE PHOTO
NASHVILLE, Tennessee—The sister of Natalie Cole said she was disappointed by the Recording Academy’s tribute to the late singer during Monday’s 58th annual Grammy Awards.
The telecast featured a clip from the 1992 Grammys performance of Natalie Cole singing in sync with her father, Nat King Cole, who appeared in video, at the conclusion of the “In Memoriam” tribute to musicians and artists who died in the previous year.
Timolin Cole told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the producer of the award show, Ken Ehrlich, told the family of their plans to memorialize the singer who died on New Year’s Eve at the age of 65.
READ: ‘Unforgettable’ singer Natalie Cole dies at 65
“We envisioned some kind of a tribute that isolated her that had some sort of significant time allotted for it,” Timolin Cole said Wednesday. “It was just not reflective of her stature.”
Representatives for the Recording Academy did not immediately responded to email and phone messages requesting comment. Ehrlich told Billboard that he was taken aback by the family’s complaints and said he believed the tribute was appropriate.
Cole said she doesn’t want to take away from the other musicians who were given tributes that night, including B.B. King, Glenn Frey and David Bowie. But she said there was no dialogue mentioning her sister’s four-decade career that earned her nine Grammy Awards, and the tribute felt like “an afterthought.”
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“There were major tributes and major acknowledgements that were done and our sister was basically shoved into a cluster of artists at the end on a small screen,” Cole said.
Cole said she had hoped that the Recording Academy would find an artist to perform her songs in her honor.