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An American classic

Freddy Cole spices up Prague Spring with his stylish blend of jazz and blues
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By Frank Kuznik
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 14th, 2008 issue

Photo by CLAY WALKER
Nat's younger brother was a star in Europe long before he broke out in the States.
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Freddy Cole (with Radio Big Band Praha)
When: Wednesday, May 21 at 7
Where: Mercedes Forum
Tickets: 350 Kč, available through Ticketpro

Freddy Cole Quartet
When: Thursday, May 22 at 9:30
Where: Lucerna Music Bar
Tickets: 300 Kč, available through Ticketpro and at the venue
Jazz, blues and the American songbook are not what comes to mind when you think of Prague Spring. But that’s what veteran pianist and singer Freddy Cole brings to the mix this year, and in terms of quality, charm and a longtime class act, the festival organizers could not have made a better choice.
Cole, 76, is the younger brother (by 12 years) of Nat “King” Cole, the legendary American crooner whose popularity has only grown since his untimely death in 1965. The Cole household in Chicago was a rich musical environment, with Nat bringing home stars like Billy Eckstine and Duke Ellington for dinner. Freddy started playing the piano at the age of five, and by his teens was performing in Chicago clubs. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he took formal musical training before embarking on a professional career, studying at the Juilliard School of Music and earning a master’s degree at the New England Conservatory of Music.
“It couldn’t hurt,” Cole says of his time in school. “But to be honest with you, I learned a lot more playing in New York, with great musicians too numerous to mention.”
Like many black American musicians during the 1950s, Cole found a more receptive audience for his work overseas. He was a star in Europe long before most people had heard of him in the United States, playing and making television appearances in the Netherlands, Germany and France, and recording in the United Kingdom. “Marcel Stellman, the head of Decca records in London, was very instrumental in launching my career overseas,” he says.
Back home, Cole paid the bills by doing commercials. “That was a very lucrative business in New York,” he says. “I was in the studio all day long. I still do two or three commercials a year. It’s great, you make money while you sleep.”
Cole’s big break in the United Stated came with the release of Grover Washington, Jr.’s 1994 CD All My Tomorrows, on which Cole played and sang Stevie Wonder’s “Overjoyed.” “That put me on to a whole other audience,” he says.
In stylistic terms, Cole’s musical roots are in the bebop era. “I was fortunate to grow up in the bop era, I heard a lot of those people and knew them,” he says. “We tried to play that bebop, but branched off, I guess because I could sing.”
Nowadays Cole covers everything from jazz standards to his brother Nat’s signature songs to contemporary hits, in a voice that still has echoes of his brother’s, but with a rougher, bluesier edge. It’s a seamless blend of pop, blues and jazz that he declines to classify. “I’m in the business of making music, not describing it,” he says. “Like a friend of mine says, there’s only two kinds of music, good and bad. And I like to say that I’m on the good side.”
This will be Cole’s Prague debut, which is remarkable, considering the number of European cities he’s visited in 50 years of touring. For a while he made a practice of performing one song in a foreign language — French, Spanish, even Japanese (though never Czech). “I used to do it quite often, out of respect,” he says. “But I learned that people don’t pay to hear me sing in their language; they want to hear me do what I do.”
Cole will do two different programs at Prague Spring. Next Wednesday, he joins a local big band at the Mercedes Forum for an 85th anniversary tribute to Czechoslovak Radio. The next night, he brings his longtime sidemen — guitarist Randy Napoleon, bassist Elias Bailey and drummer Curtis Boyd — to Lucerna Music Bar for a program called “From Broadway to the Blues.”
“We’ll be playing some toe-tapping music,” Cole promises.
And singing in English.

Frank Kuznik can be reached at fkuznik@praguepost.com


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