Natalie Cole leaves the past behind

Natalie Cole has won eight Grammys, but now, the woman who came of age in the music industry is re-inventing her sound, singing hit songs by performers Fiona Apple, Aretha Franklin and Neil Young. It's a sharp turn for a woman perhaps best known for singing jazz standards.

Her new album, due out this week, is called "Leavin'" -- as in leaving the past behind.

So far, Cole, daughter of music legend Nat King Cole, has sold more than 30 million records. Her father sang the melody of his generation, "Mona Lisa" and became the first African American to have his own TV show. Music lovers couldn't get enough of his smooth and smoky voice.

In 1957, fans were treated to a rare personal glimpse on Edward R. Murrow's "Person to Person." Young Natalie Cole made a cameo appearance. Cole has said she thought of her family as the black Kennedys.

"From a little girl I was always very mouthy, bossy, spontaneous, impulsive, all those things, and he always would just say, 'Let it ride,' you know? He liked that about me. He never tried to suppress it," she told Sunday Morning correspondent Sarah Hughes in reference to her father.

Cole also recalled that her father saw star quality in his daughter early on.

"He did say to a few people, 'I think she's got it.' Whatever it is, he saw that," she said. "And I remember when I first sang with my dad really professionally I had to audition. He said, 'You're gonna have to show me that you can do this.'"

At 11 years old, she got the part.

"I got to come out there and take a bow," Cole said. "And I probably got bitten that night, as they say, you know. And I was like, 'Ooh, I like this.'"

Four years later, lung cancer silenced Nat King Cole.

"To lose a parent at that age is just devastating," Cole said.

She went off to college, not planning on a life in show business. And when she did begin singing professionally she found that being Nat King Cole's daughter was a mixed blessing.

"Yeah, and when I finally decided to start singing I had to like really pitch a bitch to the promoters and to the owners of these clubs," she said.

Soon everyone knew her name. In 1975 she struck gold with her first album, "Inseparable." She won the Grammy for Best R & B Artist. At 26, she assumed the king's throne. But behind the curtain, her life was out of control.

"There's an old church saying, you only see the glory but you don't know the story," she said.

Cole had developed a serious drug habit. She got hooked on heroin, crack cocaine and alcohol. She was living dangerously close to the edge for years.

In 1981, when fire swept through the Las Vegas Hilton, Cole got trapped inside her room. Having just played a gig, she and her bodyguard waited too long to escape.

"I had pulled out my paraphernalia that had my drugs. I was getting ready to say, 'OK, this is the way I'm going. I guess I'm going out like this,'" she told Hughes. "And I was talking to God and I said, If you want me to go, I'm going. This is how I'm going out. You know, and when they hacked, you know, axed the door down and came through it was like Valhalla. I mean, it was like God was saying, 'I'm not through with you yet.'"

Still, it wasn't enough. In her frank autobiography, Cole reveals the most personal details of her struggle, later depicted in a made-for-TV movie. In 1983, she hit rock-bottom and spent six months at the Hazelden Clinic in Minnesota.

"Those people gave me my life back one day at a time," she said. "And it was such a revelation, actually for me to start liking myself after all these years. I didn't realize I was still grieving for my father at 30-something."

It was a long way back to the top of charts. In 1989 she made it with the song, "Miss you Like Crazy." Two years later, with the help of the man she missed the most, her career reached new heights when she recorded the multi-Grammy-winning duet, "Unforgettable," in the same Capitol studio her father used decades before.

"That was really my thank-you," she said. "I owed that to him."

Looking back, she says one of her biggest regrets was divorcing her first husband, songwriter Marvin Yancy, the father of her only son, Robbie, who now tours with her.

Although she prefers to keep her private life private, the one original song on the new album, "Five Minutes Away," is written for her new boyfriend.

After many struggles, Cole said she is on solid ground today and thinks her father is proud of her.

"I think that I am a walking testimony to, you can have scars," she said. "You can go through turbulent times and still have victory in your life."