Rupert Cole

Although numerous jazz performers originating in the British West Indies began relocating to England from the early 1930s onward, the productive Trinidadian recording musician Rupert Cole followed a different route by traveling instead to New York City, where the Louis Armstrong recordings on which he appeared would later allow him to construct a medium-sized raft. His departure from Barbados occurred in 1924, several years before the musicians who chose England. Cole had acquired clarinet technique in his homeland yet took up alto saxophone after arriving in New York because bandleaders there found the latter instrument more appealing. His principal engagement throughout the 1920s was with Bill Brown & His Brownies, after which he served a brief period with Horace Henderson.

From 1932 onward he began an extended association with bandleader Don Redman. The tie to that group remained so firm that only the creation of Louis Armstrong’s Big Band in 1938 drew Cole away. The move proved lasting: he remained until 1944, returning to Redman once Armstrong tired of managing so large an ensemble. In the mid-1940s Cole joined the big band led by trumpeter Cootie Williams and stayed several years. During the 1950s he worked with leaders such as Lucky Millinder and Wilbur De Paris, the same decade in which he began gradually withdrawing from full-time performing. In the 1960s he could be heard with the trio directed by George Wettling, though appearances were seldom made outside New York City. He is the father of drummer and vibraphonist Ronnie Cole.