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AFRO-AMERICAN MUSIC INSTITUTE CELEBRATES 36 YEARS

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http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/building-today-for-tomorrow/x/267428

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PITTSBURGH JAZZ

 

From Blakey to Brown, Como to Costa, Eckstine to Eldridge, Galbraith to Garner, Harris to Hines, Horne to Hyman, Jamal to Jefferson, Kelly to Klook; Mancini to Marmarosa, May to Mitchell, Negri to Nestico, Parlan to Ponder, Reed to Ruther, Strayhorn to Sullivan, Turk to Turrentine, Wade to Williams… the forthcoming publication Treasury of Pittsburgh Jazz Connections by Dr. Nelson Harrison and Dr. Ralph Proctor, Jr. will document the legacy of one of the world’s greatest jazz capitals.

 

Do you want to know who Dizzy Gillespie  idolized? Did you ever wonder who inspired Kenny Clarke and Art Blakey? Who was the pianist that mentored Monk, Bud Powell, Tad Dameron, Elmo Hope, Sarah Vaughan and Mel Torme? Who was Art Tatum’s idol and Nat Cole’s mentor? What musical quartet pioneered the concept adopted later by the Modern Jazz Quartet? Were you ever curious to know who taught saxophone to Stanley Turrentine or who taught piano to Ahmad Jamal? What community music school trained Robert McFerrin, Sr. for his history-making debut with the Metropolitan Opera? What virtually unknown pianist was a significant influence on young John Coltrane, Shirley Scott, McCoy Tyner, Bobby Timmons and Ray Bryant when he moved to Philadelphia from Pittsburgh in the 1940s?  Would you be surprised to know that Erroll Garner attended classes at the Julliard School of Music in New York and was at the top of his class in writing and arranging proficiency?

 

Some answers  can be gleaned from the postings on the Pittsburgh Jazz Network.

 

For almost 100 years the Pittsburgh region has been a metacenter of jazz originality that is second to no other in the history of jazz.  One of the best kept secrets in jazz folklore, the Pittsburgh Jazz Legacy has heretofore remained mythical.  We have dubbed it “the greatest story never told” since it has not been represented in writing before now in such a way as to be accessible to anyone seeking to know more about it.  When it was happening, little did we know how priceless the memories would become when the times were gone.

 

Today jazz is still king in Pittsburgh, with events, performances and activities happening all the time. The Pittsburgh Jazz Network is dedicated to celebrating and showcasing the places, artists and fans that carry on the legacy of Pittsburgh's jazz heritage.

 

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Duke Ellington is first African-American and the first musician to solo on U.S. circulating coin

    MARY LOU WILLIAMS     

            INTERVIEW

       In Her Own Words

Freddy Cole, Singer and Brother of Nat "King" Cole, Has Died at 88

Freddy Cole, Singer Who Eluded the Shadow of His Brother Nat "King" Cole, Has Died at 88

  JUN 28, 2020

Freddy Cole, whose debonair yet unassuming vocal style lighted his way through a distinguished jazz career, in and out of the shadow of his older brother Nat “King” Cole, died on Saturday at his home in Atlanta, Ga.

He was 88, and had been suffering of late from cardiovascular issues, said his manager, Suzi Reynolds, who did not specify a cause of death.

With his charming, easeful baritone and a crisp, efficient touch at the piano, Cole carved out a professional career of more than 65 years. A consummate entertainer, he excelled at bringing an audience into his confidence, turning a song into a shared experience. He was a master of subtle embellishment, using miniscule variations in phrasing and tone to better tell a story, or set a mood.

Because of a familial resemblance in vocal timbre, and a fondness for some of the same material, Cole endured a lifetime of reflexive comparisons to his most famous sibling. Nat “King” Cole, about a dozen years his senior, was already a celebrity and top draw by the early 1950s, when Freddy first embarked on a recording career. 

The situation never produced any resentment, but it was unmistakably something to overcome, and even to acknowledge. In the mid-1970s — a decade after Nat’s death, and just as his daughter Natalie Cole was rocketing to pop stardom — Freddy named his fifth album The Cole Nobody Knows

Writing in The New York Times around the time of its release, John S. Wilson made note of both the similarities and differences between Freddy and Nat. “The full, rounded sound of each syllable, each consonant, that was a hallmark of Nat Cole’s singing, is present in his brother’s work, too,” he wrote, “although Freddy Cole’s projection is a bit softer, not quite as positively enunciated and projected.”

In time, Freddy Cole felt less compelled to draw those distinctions himself, performing more of the songs that had long been associated with his brother. And in 1991 he released an album whose title track playfully put the matter to rest. In the song, “I’m Not My Brother, I’m Me,” Freddy explains with a shrug that even if he does sound a little like his brother, and even when he chooses to perform a tune like “Mona Lisa,” he’s very much his own man. One wry passage also acknowledges that, in this head-to-head matchup, he’ll always be the gracious underdog:

Hey, I’m not trying to fill nobody’s shoes

You see, my brother made a whole lot of money

But I sing the blues.

Lionel Frederick Coles was born in Chicago on Oct. 15, 1931. He was the fifth and youngest child of the Rev. Edward “E.J.” Coles, a Baptist minister, and Perlina Coles, who played piano and led the choir. Freddie learned to play piano from his mother, who had also taught his older brothers, Eddie, Ike and Nat.

The Cole household was a busy waystation for musicians passing through, and Freddy grew up in casual proximity to some of the greats: Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Count Basie. He was most taken with the singer and bandleader Billy Eckstine, whose deep voice and suave delivery would forever be a source of inspiration. (A decade ago, Cole received a Grammy nomination for his tribute album Freddy Cole Sings Mr. B.)

But partly because of the sterling accomplishments of his brothers, Freddy didn’t gravitate at first to music as a vocation. A gifted high school athlete, he harbored hopes of playing in the National Football League, and might have been recruited if not for an injury on the field.

It was Nat who urged him to move to New York and begin pursuing music, which he did with distinction, studying at Juilliard and then the New England Conservatory. He was still a student when he released his first singles, “The Joke Is On Me” (1952) and “Whispering Grass” (1953), both on Dot Records.

The same label released Cole’s assured 1964 debut album, Waiter, Ask the Man to Play the Blues, which was later reissued by Verve. (Among its sidemen: tenor saxophonist Sam “The Man” Taylor and bassist Milt Hinton.) Over the next few decades, Cole kept touring and recording, with some success but no great fanfare.

Freddy Cole at the WBGO Champions of Jazz Gala, Nov. 6, 2009.
CREDIT WBGO

Cole’s fortunes began to turn in the early 1990s, once he began a fruitful association with promoter and producer Todd Barkan. On a string of albums for Fantasy, like Always and A Circle of Love, Cole reinforced his reputation for deceptive ease and companionable soul. He deepened that impression when he began recording for HighNote Records, in the mid-2000s. He led a quartet with longtime partners, like guitarist Randy Napoleon, and often welcomed guests like saxophonists Houston Person and Harry Allen.

“Freddy Cole became one of the most delightful jazz singers,” says Michael Bourne, the host of Singers Unlimited. “Charming. Swinging. And a good friend of WBGO. He came to play and sing. He came to tell stories.”

Cole is survived by a daughter, Crystal Cole, and a son, Lionel Cole; a grandson, Tracy Cole, and granddaughter, Christina Cole; and a large extended family.

Cole maintained a down-the-earth persona both remarkable and rare for an artist of his stature. Nicole Sweeney, the host of Evening Jazz, recalls that in the mid-2000s, when she was on the air at WCLK in Atlanta, he would show up unannounced to deliver each new album by hand. “I would never know when Freddy was coming,” she says. “But it just would happen: I would get off the microphone, and turn around, and in this little rectangle of a window: Oh look, it’s Freddy.”

Earlier this year, Cole had a Valentine’s Day engagement at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, as part of Monday Nights with WBGO. “I definitely asked what keeps him going, because I feel like I get a new album from him almost every year,” recalls Sweeney, the evening’s host.

“He just said he doesn’t know any other way to be. The music keeps him going.”

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Guitarist Randy Napoleon remembers the great Freddy Cole

Posted Monday, June 29, 2020 4:34 pm

MONDAY, June 29 — Jazz lovers suffered a big loss Saturday when Freddy Cole, master interpreter of jazz and blues standards and younger brother of jazz legend Nat King Cole, died at age 88 of complications from a heart ailment. Cole played an intimate concert benefitting the Jazz Alliance of Mid-Michigan in East Lansing Aug. 22, 2018, with MSU jazz guitar Professor Randy Napoleon on guitar.

Few people felt last week’s loss more keenly than Napoleon, a member of Cole’s band for more than 15 years.  The two men met in New York in 1999. Napoleon subbed on guitar for Cole a few times and Cole was an informal mentor to Napoleon. By the time Napoleon joined Cole’s band full time in 2006, they were close friends.

Were you apprehensive about playing with one of your jazz idols?
I was really scared. The thing about playing with Freddy is you’re never going to get a set list. He won’t even tell you the song before he starts playing it. You really have to use your ears and respond. He trusted you to figure it out and create your own part around what he was playing. As you got to know his language, it became incredibly fun to play with him, because we could hit things together, or I could play around what he played. It got to where we could read each other’s minds and there’s no short cut to that. We, the band, really became like one. It got to the point where there were no off-nights. Every night we would get to our thing.

So he would pull out a tune you’d never done and expect you to play?Oh, always. When I first joined the band, there was no rehearsal, no set list, nothing. Years into playing with him, he would start playing a song I didn’t know. I hesitate to put a number, but I’d say his book had to be 500 to 1,000 tunes. I learned many of them from studying his stuff, but it’s impossible to learn 50 years of music and impossible to know exactly how he’s going to play it. The thing for him is, he’s thinking about the song less as notes and more as stories. Sometimes someone in the audience would make him think of something and he would go into a story that fit the mood, so he really was singing to the audience. It was not at all a scripted thing. It was almost like having a conversation.But none of it is mysterious. Sometimes people are deliberately tricky about the harmonies they use or the rhythms they play. Freddy played stuff that made sense and was easy to follow, so it was not as difficult as you might imagine. If you were paying attention, you could listen and play with him. It really helped me, too. It made my ears and my response time a lot quicker.

Did you hang out with him off the bandstand?

Constantly, 24 hours a day. We might wake up at 4 in the morning, go down to the lobby, someone would take us to the airport, we’d get breakfast and sit waiting for the plane; we’d fly and drive to the hotel, maybe take a quick nap, do a sound check, we’d eat dinner together, play the gig and then we’d usually go and hang out and sleep on the plane. If it was a driving tour we’d be on the van six to eight hours a day. So you really get to know people. I used to play games in my mind. We’d be out to dinner and I’d look at the menu and predict what each band member would order, and I was usually right.

Freddy was a living link to so many jazz legends. You must have heard a lot of great stories — a post-graduate seminar in jazz history.

That’s exactly what it was. It was so casual for him. It was just his community. He wouldn’t always expand on it. It was funny. I would say, ‘Freddy, did you know Bud Powell?’ He’s say, ‘Oh, yeah, I knew Bud. Nice guy. He liked my brother.’ That would be it. I’d mention someone else and he’d say, ‘Oh yeah, he was crazy.’ I wouldn’t get a lot, but he knew all of them and that was the world he came up in. For us, when we talk about Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole, it feels like these legends. For him, it’s just his family and his friends, his circle.

He had a dry sense of humor and liked to underplay everything.

Oh yeah, he loved to laugh. He wouldn’t always talk a lot but he loved being with people. He’d get one glass of wine and sip it really slow. Early on, when I was with him and he was in his early 70s and still full of energy, we would just beg him to go home. We’d have an early lobby call coming up and Freddy was just the king of hanging out. We’d be so tired. We’d say, ‘Freddy, can we please go home?’ He loved finding an after-hours jam session and just sitting in the back. He loved meeting people and he seemed to genuinely like everyone. You had to be quite a jerk to get on his wrong side.

He was clearly having health problems when he came to East Lansing in 2018, but when he started playing, he came to life and the spirit just lifted the body with it.

Music comes from somewhere else. The last gig I played with Freddy was last August at the Chicago Jazz Festival. It was a large concert in Millennium Park, maybe 10,000 plus people. Freddy was physically very weak, but his singing was just ethereal. It was more powerful than ever. It was the ultimate lesson on what matters in music. As young musicians, we’re trying to develop our facility, our speed and accuracy, power and projection and all these things. In his extreme old age, Freddy was stripped of those things, and yet he was still able to control this whole audience. You could hear a pin drop. They were waiting on every word. It was really amazing. And Chicago was his hometown. It was really special.

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