Alex Henderson

On the Cover

Freddy Cole: Heir to the Throne

By Alex Henderson

Freddy Cole, who celebrated his 85th birthday on Oct. 15th, has had a complex relationship with the music of his older brother, the legendary Nat King Cole. On one hand, the veteran singer/pianist has included songs associated with Nat in his repertoire and isn’t shy about singing his praises but is quick to point out that he is his own person. In fact, one of his albums is titled I’m Not My Brother, I’m Me. 

Although Cole has often included Nat-associated songs on his albums, he avoided devoting an entire album to his brother’s legacy—that is, until he recorded his most recent album, He Was the King, released by HighNote earlier this year and produced by Todd Barkan and Katherine Miller.

“So many people have done so-called tribute albums to my brother,” explains Cole, a Chicago native who spent a lot of time in Los Angeles and New York City but now lives in Atlanta. “For a long time, I would hear, ‘So and so just did this song by Nat.’ People would ask me when I was going to record an album for Nat King Cole and I got to thinking that it was time for me to do it. I finally said, ‘All these other people have done tribute albums to Nat. Why not me?’”

Everyone from guitarists John Pizzarelli and George Benson and pianist Oscar Peterson to R&B star Marvin Gaye has recorded a Nat King Cole tribute album, not surprisingly as Nat, only 45 when he died of lung cancer in 1965, is one of the most iconic jazz pop singer/pianists of the 20th Century, making his mark playing straightahead swing with his intimate trio before shifting his focus to traditional pop with orchestral hits like “Nature Boy” in 1948, “Mona Lisa” in 1950 and “Unforgettable” and “Too Young” in 1951.

He Was the King finds Cole acknowledging different periods of his brother’s career. He remembers the trio with his versions of Harold Arlen’s “It’s Only a Paper Moon” and Cliff Burwell’s “Sweet Lorraine” and explores his traditional pop recordings with “Mona Lisa”. But Fred Wise’s “The Best Man” and Benny Benjamin/George David Weiss’ “Jet” weren’t among Nat’s more famous recordings, which is exactly the point: Cole wanted to offer some surprises and not restrict himself to his brother’s major hits.

“My brother was a very talented man and he used his talents well,” Cole asserts. “But he did what he did and I do what I do. I could have done something else on He Was the King. I could have succumbed to formality and done the same things that everyone else has done. But we came up with our own ideas.”

Freddy paid homage to Nat in the past on stage with another one of his siblings: the late pianist Ike Cole. “I did one tour with my brother Ike before he passed,” he recalls. “Ike was a great piano player who sang also. We used to do a couple of things together. We would sing and we would say, ‘This was Nat King Cole from the beginning.’ We did it in stages, from here to there—we would start out doing the trio things and we moved on to songs Nat did in the ‘50s. It was a lot of fun, and people liked it very much when we did it over in Europe.”

Cole has not hesitated to acknowledge that he recently turned 85. This past October, he performed 85th birthday shows in Philadelphia, Detroit and Cleveland as well as at New York City’s Jazz Standard and Pittsburgh’s Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, where he was joined by singer Nnenna Freelon. The fact that he has been vocal about turning 85 is not insignificant; with a recording history that spans over 60 years, Cole rightly wears his age like a badge of honor.

Cole was only six years old when he began studying the piano in 1937 and was surrounded by music growing up; his musical family is multigenerational with older brothers Nat and Ike (1927- 2001), son Lionel, a pianist/songwriter known for his work with Teena Marie, Mariah Carey, Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave fame) and other R&B stars, and superstar niece Natalie Cole (1950-2015). He Was the King, arguably, is to Cole what 1991’s Unforgettable With Love was to Natalie. Throughout much of her career, she focused primarily on R&B/pop and downplayed the fact that she was Nat’s daughter. With Unforgettable With Love, however, she finally took the plunge and recorded a full-fledged Nat King Cole tribute album after avoiding it for so long.

Although Cole was active on the Chicago jazz scene in the ‘40s, his recording career officially started in 1952 with the release of his first single, “The Joke’s on Me”. He has recorded for many different labels over the years, with most of his recent albums coming out on New York City-based HighNote Records. Cole likes the fact that label president Joe Fields and others at the company have encouraged him to take some chances with his projects. 

“HighNote has been very good with me and with what they let me do,” Cole stresses. “I don’t like to be recording just to be recording. So when we get our heads together, I will make a suggestion to Joe Fields or to Todd Barkan or whoever else is involved. I’ll say, ‘You bring in five songs, I’ll bring in five songs—and we’ll start picking from those groups of songs.’ That way, you can get some variety into what you’re doing.

"I have no complaints about HighNote... Freddy Cole Sings Mr. B [a 2010 tribute to singer Billy Eckstine] was one of my favorite CDs I’ve ever done. And that blues album [2014’s Singing the Blues] came about because everybody likes the blues. Freddy Cole Sings Mr. and Singing the Blues were two of the top albums I did for HighNote. I think those CDs will be around for a while.”

The veteran isn’t sure what his next HighNote project will be. One idea he has tossed around is recording an album of Nat King Cole Trio-associated repertoire, but instead of using a trio as his brother did in the ‘30s-40s, he would oversee a big band. And he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of recording an instrumental album at some point.

“You know, I thought about doing an instrumental CD,” Cole notes. “I really did. I just might do that. I might take a day or so, go into a studio with a rhythm section and do it. It’s crossed my mind. We’ll have to see about it, but it’s one of those projects that I just might do. It would be good, but there are so many great piano players out there that you take your heart in your hands.”

Despite the stylistic similarities between Freddy and Nat, there are striking differences as well. The former favors a rougher, darker, smokier edge. And while Nat’s style of piano playing was rooted in swing, Cole is much more of a bop pianist. Another important difference is that while Nat is remembered for both his instrumental recordings and his vocal performances, Freddy is seldom described as an instrumentalist, though he performs the occasional instrumental.

Looking back on his long career, Cole has many fond memories of musicians he knew along the way, from saxophonist Grover Washington, Jr. (who featured him on parts of his 1994 album All My Tomorrows) to singer Billy Paul. And at 85, he finds it interesting that young musicians are embracing the type of jazz he was playing 60 years ago. 

“Sometimes, I’ll have to laugh when I go someplace for dinner and they’re playing jazz music—and the young guys are playing the same things I used to play when I was 18, 19, 20 years old playing bebop. They’re doing the same things I was doing when I was that age. But they’re playing good music. As Duke Ellington used to say, there’s only two kinds of music: good and bad. And they’re playing good.”

 He is always happy to tell younger musicians about great improvisers from the past. “I get a kick out of the fact that the young guys respect me enough to come up and ask me about things,” Cole says. “That’s very rewarding: to know that somebody’s paying attention to what you’re doing. The other day, the driver who picked us up at the airport was a young musician and he wanted to know about this guy and that guy. And I asked him if he had ever heard of Lucky Thompson. No, he hadn’t. Not too many people these days have, but Lucky was one of my favorite saxophone players. So musical and so warm with his sound. We talked about Lucky the other day—Lucky and Stanley Turrentine. To me, Lucky Thompson and Stanley Turrentine had a lot in common.”

He continues, “You’ll find that throughout the world, the music is the telling force. If you’re doing the right music—or not the right music, good music—you can reach out and touch someone. If you can reach out and touch someone while you’re working, your job is done.” •• 

Recommended listening: 

• Freddy Cole—Waiter, Ask the Man to Play the Blues (Dot-Verve, 1964)

• Freddy Cole—The Cole Nobody Knows (First Shot - Audiophile/Sonorama, 1976)

• Freddy Cole—I’m Not My Brother, I’m Me (Sunnyside - HighNote, 1990)

• Freddy Cole—A Circle of Love (Fantasy, 1993/95)

• Freddy Cole—The Dreamer In Me: Live at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola (HighNote, 2008)

• Freddy Cole—He Was the King (HighNote, 2015)