A Slow Killer
Sam had already given up his extreme drinking and drug use, but there was one destructive habit he kept up – smoking. According to Vanity Fair, “Davis liked to inhale cigarette smoke in the middle of a song and exhale with the note and the smoke pouring out.” This was something singer Nat King Cole warned him about.
Sammy Davis Jr performing. Photo by Eugene Adebari / Shutterstock
He said: “Don’t do that. You’re burning your vocal cords with all that heat—you’re making it worse.” Sammy’s manager, Sy Marsh, took him to a specialist in the late 1980s. He discovered that singing and smoking did, in fact, lead to inflamed nodes on his vocal cords. He should have listened to Nat King Cole!