Freddy Cole (1931-2020): Quietly legendary

Vocalist, pianist, and bandleader Freddy Cole died on June 27, 2020 after over 65 years as a professional musician. He outlived his famous older brother Nat “King” Cole as well as influential male vocalists like Billy Eckstine, Frank Sinatra, and Joe Williams. Though he was nominated for multiple Grammy Awards in the vocal jazz category, and regularly placed among the top male vocalists in Downbeat Magazine’s annual jazz poll, he never received the level of notoriety or acclaim these performers did during their lifetimes. As a vocalist and jazz pianist making a living in jazz his all-around excellence and consistency defy comparison.

Though Cole began recording in the early 1950s he was not a mainstream jazz fixture until 1991’s I’m Not My Brother, I’m Me, which  was followed by several albums produced by Todd Barkan, including 1995’s This is the Life. It’s important to understand that Cole is a classically trained pianist (Julliard) who toured and recorded for decades prior to the early 1990s so he was not really “discovered.” He merely began receiving the attention he has long deserved including press profiles and more high profile gigs.

Pianist, vocalist, and bandleader Freddy Cole made beautiful music with his Quartet including bassist Elias Bailey and guitarist Randy Napoleon, pictured above. (Photo source: William Struhs, Charleston City Paper, 2016)

I first heard Cole live at the Campus Theatre in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania and he was perfect. He seamlessly led his band—drummer Curtis Boyd, guitarist Randy Napoleon and bassist Elias Bailey—from the piano flowing from one song to the next with passion that blossomed into unbridled joy. Cole was an introverted performer whose musicianship was so tight you never want him to stop. When he did, he was charming, graceful, and efficient. He appreciated his audience and understood how to welcome you into his world. Wisely, he let you enjoy it without excess commentary. His repertoire mixed familiar standards with bits of Nat’s repertoire plus relatively obscure songs. It didn’t matter—in his able hands and his lovely mix of crooning and parlando singing everything sounded good. I saw him perform with his band at Birdland during the Christmas season in 2016 and 2017 and those qualities remained intact. Though there were a few discernible signs of aging  Cole continually amazed me with his penchant for singing songs that were obscure yet became instantly familiar in his warm delivery and relaxed interplay with his bandmates. The fluidity of their chemistry belied the lack of a setlist or arrangements. This was improvisational vocal music performed at a peak level of musicianship.

Live performances, such as that captured on 2009’s Grammy nominated set The Dreamer in Me, was where Cole and his bandmates were in their element.

After listening to the Freddy Cole Quartet play live, I sought out every recording I could find in physical form and streaming services. This list included his “comeback” This is the Life, 1997’s To the Ends of the Earth, 1998’s Love Makes the Changes, and 2010’s Freddy Cole Sings “Mr. B” among others. I found that Cole has revealed a voluminous range of song taste.  Cole treated Bread’s “If” and Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” with the same reverence he showed to standards like “I Remember You” and “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To” or Nat’s signature “Send for Me.” By the 2010s his performances, including his collaborative style with  Bailey, Napoleon, and drummers Curtis Boyd and Quentin Baxter, and pianist John Di Martino, were immediately recognizable, always anchored by a distinctly intimate style. He increasingly located the jazz in songs from the rock era on 2011’s Talk to Me and 2013’s This and That; focused on different kinds of blues on 2014’s Singing the Blues; saluted his brother on 2016’s He Was the King; and continued to familiarize listeners with unheralded ballad gems on 2018’s The Mood is You his final recording.

Cole was so deft and lean in his approach that you might not have ever noticed what he was doing. He favored small group arrangements with a firm sense of beat and sang in an elegant crooning style that was articulate, unhurried, and uncommonly warm. Though onstage he was very focused on playing and almost too reserved about speaking, he was never cold. He balanced stealth and vitality with a classical sense of proportion.  A central part of his artistry, most evident in listening to live sets such as 1992’s Live at Birdland,  1994’s Live at Vartan Jazz, and 2009’s The Dreamer in Me: Live at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Jazz at Lincoln Center, was “the build.” He performed mid-tempo ballads and swing numbers initially but once he got comfortable, he dipped into the blues with hushed authority. On songs like Nat’s 1957 hit “Send for Me” and “On the South Side of Chicago” (from Dreamer) he cooked. A sly sense of humor was also present in his work, especially on Vartan’s original tune “Home Fried Potatoes” and his version of “Ma, She’s Making Eyes at Me” on his Eckstine tribute set  Mr. B. He was having fun and you got this without ever feeling crowded.

On Freddy Cole’s studio albums, such as 1995’s Always, he often delivered surprising interpretations of familiar standards and contemporary popular songs. His versions of “The Rose,” “If,” and “Isn’t She Lovely,” are highlights of the album.

Chronologically and stylistically I classify Cole as a jazz sensualist alongside singers like Andy Bey (b. 1939), Shirley Horn (1934-2005), and Jimmy Scott (1925-2014). All four are African-American singers with very hushed, stylized approaches to interpretation who began performing in the 1950s or 1960s. They performed for years, but were “rediscovered” by the jazz mainstream in the 1980s and 1990s. Whereas the outgoing virtuosity of Ella and Sarah grab you immediately, the art of the sensualist requires you to listen and savor their juxtapositions of melody, harmony, rhythm, and lyric to fully get it. Their music is friendly, but it is not always immediately accessible; it requires a certain immersion to grasp their full style. All four massage ballads with a profound languidness. The blues infuses much of their work as they are masters of melancholy, but never self-pity. And when the occasion arises Bey, Horn, and Cole can also swing like hell (Scott favored ballads). Cole is perhaps the most outgoing of these singers. He was not treated as a phenomenon like Scott was by the late 1980s press. Nor did he record for a high profile label like Verve as did Shirley Horn, and he had less of a cult following than Bey. In this sense he is an affiliate of the sensual school but very much his own artist.

1995’s This the Life, recorded for Muse Records, is one of the albums from the 1990s that brought him renewed attention after recording since the 1950s.

Nat Cole’s timbre certainly inflects Freddy’s overall sound but Nat displayed a greater affinity for lightness in tone and inflection. For example, Freddy seemed too reserved and serious to sing “Those-Lazy-Hazy-Crazy-Days of Summer” or “Ramblin’ Rose” with a straight face. Nat performed W.C. Handy’s sleek blues tunes ably on 1958’s swinging St. Louis Blues album. But Freddie sings low down tunes with a more visceral bite. Though Louis “Pops” Armstrong influenced all jazz singers Freddie’s stated mentor is Eckstine.  His baritone is bigger and more luscious than Cole’s but they share a consistent adult sensuality in their singing and a penchant for the blues (though Eckstine found blues tunes limited musically).

In addition to his vast repertoire, sly humor, and penchant for the blues, Cole was also an unabashed romantic. No one currently singing pop music sang with the wide-eyed sense of appreciation and love in their tonal choices on ballads. In surveying the range of songs he has sung since the early 1990s I’m struck by the near randomness of the songs. Cole loves ballads and seeks them out wherever he can. Alan and Marilyn Bergman wrote “Love Makes the Changes” (the title track of his 1998 album) for him because they were so impressed by his singing. His romanticism defined his albums thematically with limited variance. A listener can never go wrong hearing Cole as he has recorded many ballad-heavy sets, and hearing him sing romantic ballads is a unique kind of bliss.   A sample of albums provides a great taste of his style.  He always surprises and rewards a careful listener. You almost take it for granted that he is going to do the right thing with every song and you’re correct.

For example, 1995’s Always features his versions of Bread’s “If,” Amanda McBroom’s “The Rose” (sung in 1980 by Bette Midler), and Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely.” These highly familiar pop tunes might seem like a grasp for a crossover audience. After you listen to them his astute interpretive choices lead you sense to that he hears something that the writers and original singers of these songs, and their audiences, missed. You hear them in his language—soulful, meditative, and swinging; the famous versions almost fall away.  In a sense his style is so consistent that savvy listeners could put their Cole playlists on shuffle or compile their own ballads set by downloading their favorite ballads by title rather than fretting about performance since Cole is virtually infallible. 

One key question about jazz singing is the question of innovation. Arguably the jazz pantheon is defined by pioneers like Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday whose style, influence, and legacy are undeniable. And innovators like Betty Carter who built from jazz’s foundations and created something singular in design. Cole is less an innovator than an exemplar of jazz as a popular art and this is intended as the highest of complements. Armed with jazz chops, blues mastery, and classical training, he authored a quietly impeccable style of jazz interpretation that was uniquely American and consistently satisfying in execution and application. Whether he was singing contemporary pop/rock, pre-rock standards, Brazilian pop, or R&B he translated all in a generous stylistic language reflecting the potential for what American interpretive music could be when performed with passion and expertise. Cole did not leap into scat solos, he rarely held long notes, and his piano solos complemented his material though it’s clear there are reservoirs of technique in his able fingers. His humility may explain why he more and more listeners discovered his unique radiance, and why he persisted well into his late 80s with such beguiled zeal.

2018’s My Mood is You, a sublime collection of love songs, was Cole’s final album. It received a Grammy nomination of Vocal Jazz Performance.

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Listening to Freddy Cole

Freddy Cole recorded albums between 1964-2018. Most of his earlier albums are out of print but some of his albums from the 1970s and 1980s are available on CD. All of Freddy Cole’s albums recorded from 1991-2018 are quality vocal jazz recordings worth a listen, and most are streamable or easy to find as used CDs. His style is also so consistent the year his albums were recorded is nearly irrelevant. Listeners seeking to him out are encouraged to begin with the following:

Live at Vartan Jazz  (1994)

A vibrant, intimate live session recorded at the Vartan Jazz a club located in Denver. Cole gives you a taste of his piano and vocal skills on familiar standards (“Miss Otis Regrets,” “Sometimes I’m Happy”), Nat King Cole tunes (“A Blossom Fell,” a five song medley), Cole signatures (“Home Fried Potatoes”), and a few rarities (“Strange,” “You’ve Let Yourself Go”). Cole and his band cook, as always, and his remarks are personable and often quite humorous.

 This is the Life (1995)

Aside from an instrumental version of “Easy to Love” This is the Life establishes the blueprint for Cole’s oeuvre. The remainder is a mix of romantic balladry and straight-ahead swing. “Easy” is followed by a sultry sax-laden “Somewhere Down the Line” a ballad arranged in a laidback tempo with a relaxed vocal and space for guitar and sax solos. This pours into “A Place in the Sun (Movin’ On)” a mid-tempo swing ballad with a more exuberant vocal.  “A Sunday Kind of Love” is given an elegant treatment with a subtle shuffle beneath it and brushed drums.  Then “Sweet Beginnings” kicks into gear. The general theme centers on a sense of renewal drawn from reflecting backward and looking ahead, a feeling celebrated in the joyful sway of the title track.

 The Dreamer in Me (Live at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola-Jazz at Lincoln Center) (2009)

 The Dreamer in Me is a lovely set that perfectly captures the seamless warmth and ease of his live performing style. You get romantic ballads (“Send for Me,” “You’re Sensational”), wistful tunes (“Where Can I Go Without You”), blues (“On the Southside of Chicago”) and blues-y treatments of pop songs (“What Now My Love”). His rapport is gentle and entertaining but the integrity of the band’s interaction is the album’s enduring core.

Freddy Cole Sings Mr. B. (2010)

2010’s tribute to Billy Eckstine, Freddy Cole Sings Mr B, is a smart tribute that employs a broad range of Eckstine’s material to illuminate his story and showcase Cole effectively. Notably he reveals the humor and blues sensibility laced throughout Eckstine’s career. He captures the emotional nuances of signature Eckstine ballads like “Cottage for Sale” and several obscurities. Cole is at his most memorable on the adorable  “Ma She’s Makin’ Eyes at Me” and his sterling takes on the blues tunes “Jelly Jelly,” “To Be or Not to Be in Love,” and “Mister You’ve Gone and Got the Blues.”

 This and That (2013)

This and That continues Cole’s tradition of interpreting a variety of songs with effortless grace. One of the set’s chief pleasures is the adventurous song list. He slows down and personalizes “Everybody’s Talkin,’” He scales down the old European neo-pop opera “Never Never Never” into an intimate declaration. He also unearths gems like the rarely performed “I Saw Stars,” sung with a lovely sense of awe, and “I Get Sentimental Over Nothing” and “What is the Color of Love.” 60 years into his career Cole continues to deepen his legacy.

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