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Few music fans know it, but Cole began his entertainment career as a groundbreaking jazz pianist before he achieved pop stardom with his velvety-smooth vocal approach to songs like ``Mona Lisa'' and ``Unforgettable.'' Gourse's ( American Jazz Singers , LJ 2/1/84) claim that Cole's keyboard style prefigured bebop and influenced pianist Ahmad Jamal is debatable. However, Gourse does a fine job of documenting the influence of Cole's second wife, Maria Ellington, who urged Cole to pursue a more lucrative singing career. Although he did not win the favor of 1950s radical Negro activists, Cole's personal, backstage struggle against segregationist attitudes in the entertainment industry were significant. This is a well-researched and readable biography that will appeal to those who appreciate the singer's inimitable style. For large music collections.-- Tim LaBorie, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia

Gourse ( Everyday: The Story of Joe Williams ) pays homage to the performer who, after starting out as a talented jazz pianist, found unprecedented fame and commercial success as a vocalist. His renditions of ``Mona Lisa,'' ``Nature Boy,'' ``Unforgettable'' and hundreds of other songs were known the world over by the time he died in 1965. Cole, a cheerful, quiet, painfully shy man who inspired devotion wherever he went, kept his personal problems out of the limelight; his adoring public was scarcely aware that he was plagued by financial woes, racial prejudice, marital difficulties, illness and complaints from critics that he had abandoned jazz for an easier road to success with popular music. The author of this well-crafted, sympathetic biography carefully pieces together the facts of her subject's life, and concludes with an impressive discography that underscores Cole's achievement. Photos not seen by PW. (June)