Freddy Cole

Freddy Cole built his name as a singer and pianist through a warm, velvety tone that positioned him as a polished artist devoted to straight-ahead jazz and R&B. The 1953 single “Whispering Grass” gave him his first taste of success, yet he spent his early years under the long shadow of comparisons to his older brother Nat King Cole. A decisive shift arrived with the 1990 album I’m Not My Brother, I’m Me, which ignited a sustained resurgence; in its wake he issued a string of acclaimed recordings and collected four Grammy nominations, among them nods for 2000’s Merry Go-Round, 2010’s Freddy Cole Sings Mr. B, and 2018’s My Mood Is You.

Born Lionel Frederick Cole in 1931, he was raised in Chicago, Illinois, where his minister father and musically inclined mother guided him to the piano at roughly age five. Like his piano-playing older brothers Ike Cole and Nat King Cole, he displayed early talent, and by his teenage years he was already performing with notable skill. Football also claimed his attention until a high-school injury prompted him to commit fully to music. He refined his abilities at Chicago’s Roosevelt Institute, then at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, and ultimately earned a master’s degree at the New England Conservatory of Music. His first recording appeared in 1952 with the single “The Joke’s on Me” on the small Chicago label Topper Records; the follow-up, “Whispering Grass,” issued on Columbia’s OKeh imprint, reached moderate chart success in 1953. Shortly afterward he toured for several months with the Earl Bostic Band alongside Johnny Coles and Benny Golson. His debut album, 1964’s Waiter, Ask the Man to Play the Blues on Dot, featured bassist Milt Hinton and drummer Osie Johnson.

Throughout the next decade Cole maintained a steady output that included 1976’s As Long as I’m Singing, 1978’s One More Love Song, and 1980’s Right from the Heart, while also establishing his own First Shot imprint. The 1990 release I’m Not My Brother, I’m Me, a refined trio session with guitarist Ed Zad and bassist Eddie Edwards, reopened doors; his visibility grew further with 1993’s This Is Life, 1997’s To the Ends of the Earth, and 1999’s Le Grand Freddy. In 2000 he joined the Telarc roster and delivered Merry-Go-Round, which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Subsequent Telarc projects encompassed the Latin-inflected Rio de Janeiro Blue in 2001 and 2003’s In the Name of Love, an album that reinterpreted soft-pop material associated with Smokey Robinson, Bonnie Raitt, and Van Morrison. GRP reissued the 1964 Dot recording Waiter, Ask the Man to Play the Blues in 2004. Cole then returned to HighNote for several warmly received albums, among them 2005’s This Love of Mine and 2006’s Because of You; that same year the documentary The Cole Nobody Knows further spotlighted his career. A second Grammy nomination arrived for 2007’s Music Maestro Please.

With 2010’s Freddy Cole Sings Mr. B he saluted longtime friend and fellow Chicago-born baritone Billy Eckstine, securing his third Grammy nomination. Talk to Me followed in 2011, spotlighting guitarist Randy Napoleon, saxophonist Harry Allen, trumpeter Terell Stafford, and additional musicians. Two years later he issued This and That, then Singing the Blues in 2014. In 2016 he offered He Was the King as a tribute to his late brother Nat King Cole. The Grammy-nominated My Mood Is You appeared in 2018, featuring saxophonist Joel Frahm, guitarist Randy Napoleon, and others. Freddy Cole passed away in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27, 2020, at age 88, from complications of cardiovascular disease.