Eight-time Grammy-Award-winning vocalist Natalie Cole celebrates her 57th birthday today (February 6). Cole could possibly add another Grammy to her mantle on Sunday, as she is nominated in the best traditional R&B category for her version of "Day Dreamin'" from her 2006 album Leavin'.

The daughter of world-renowned pianist and crooner Nat King Cole, Natalie didn't begin following his professional path until she attended the University Of Massachusetts in the late '60s. Cole enjoyed her first commercial success with the 1975 song "This Will Be," which spent two weeks atop the Billboard R&B chart and netted her Best New Artist and Best Performance Grammys.

She charted other R&B hits, including "Inseparable," "Our Love," and "I Got Love On My Mind." She stayed with Capitol until 1983, when she switched to Epic for the album I'm Ready, which failed to yield a single.

The singer struggled to overcome substance abuse problems, and to reinvent herself for a changing market. Signed to Elektra, she released Everlasting in 1987, an album that covered a wide range of R&B, pop, and jazz-leaning material, including a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac" and a cover of the standard that was associated most with her father, "When I Fall In Love."

She followed with Good To Be Back in 1989, then an album of George Shearing standards before hitting it big again in 1991, when she released Unforgettable, an album of standards that helped relaunch her career. The album, which went seven-times platinum, featured a studio-engineered duet with her late father on the title track, and won three Grammy awards.

In 1993 she released Take A Look, which earned her a Best Jazz Vocal Performance Grammy. The 1996 follow-up, Stardust, also featuring a wealth of songs from the American Songbook, included another studio-engineered duet with daddy Nat King Cole on "When I Fall In Love," which earned her a Grammy.

After moving to Verve, the singer released 2002's Ask A Woman Who Knows. The album included a mix of lesser known standards, backed by the likes of Joe Sample, Russell Malone, Christian McBride, and the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra.

Her latest album, Leavin', is a return to the pop-soul roots that she began her career with. The set features new versions of songs initially made famous by Aretha Franklin, Fiona Apple, Shelby Lynne, Neil Young and Kate Bush.

In addition to her Grammy Awards, Cole was honored in 1999 with Soul Train's Lady Of Soul Lena Horne Award for Outstanding Career Achievement. She noted that the honor meant a lot to her: "It's just different when you get it from your own. It really, really is because there are so many of us that we get so far and then we kinda fade away. And the fact that people have remembered -- the face that there were people in the audience that even remembered! Because there were a lot of folks in the audience that don't even remember who Natalie Cole is! Hello! They weren't even born when I first started. You know, there's just some of us who have been very blessed to not fall through the cracks."

For more about Natalie, visit her website at: www.nataliecole.com.