Music Maestro Please (HighNote Records)
Freddy Cole
Released August 28, 2007
Grammy Nominee for Best Jazz Vocal Album 2008
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_ltk_hW7kK4Gkc3tjmGAnJz1lRxVA3Vzr0
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/6b9Ao221B8KlekwB83B6iW?si=OjpQvLkXTc-qHbtQAPFRWg
About:
Freddy’s previous HighNote CD “Because of You: Freddy Cole Sings Tony Bennett” (HighNote HCD 7156) was a Grammy Awards Ballot Finalist for Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Best Jazz Vocal Album. Freddy Cole’s latest CD continues his family’s rich musical dynasty which includes his brother, icon Nat ‘King’ Cole and Grammy Award-winning niece, Natalie. As Rex Reed of the New York Daily News pointed out, “Freddy Cole has moved into the front ranks of Jazz-oriented night-club performers with a style and a musical sophistication that is uniquely his own”. The great pianist, Bill Charlap plays the role of musical partner rather than respectful accompanist as he and Freddy join in a meeting of the minds. Charlap and the rhythm section seem to revel in the chance to fill out the mood that Freddy establishes and it’s evident that all those involved had fun while they recorded it – which creates a best-of-all-worlds situation.
Track Listing:
1. I’ll Never Be the Same 6:01
2. My Ideal 3:18
3. Medley: Don’t Take Your Love from Me/I Never Had a Chance 4:07
4. Music, Maestro, Please 7:27
5. If I Love Again 4:21
6. Why Did I Choose You? 3:47
7. Once in a While 3:16
8. You Leave Me Breathless 5:20
9. There Are Such Things 4:48
10. You Could Hear a Pin Drop (Bobby Cole) 3:31
11. How Do You Say Auf Wiedersehn? 5:48
Personnel:
Fred Cole: vocals
Bill Charlap: piano
Peter Washington: bass
Kenny Washington: drums
Recorded May 17 – 18, 2006, at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Produced by Todd Barkan
Executive Producer: Joe Fields
Engineer, mixed and mastered by Rudy Van Gelder
Photography: R. Andrew Lepley
Review:
For Music Maestro Please (High Note, 2007), his seventeenth releases since I’m Not My Brother, I’m Me (High Note, 1990), singer/pianist Freddy Cole teamed with pianist Bill Charlap and his trio, featuring bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington. The album features songs that, for the most part, the Georgia Music Hall of Famer (he was inducted in 2007 as a music pioneer—”the first time for a jazz performer,” he comments—in a ceremony that also nominated rapper/actor Usher and rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd) has never done before, even in a live format.
“Bill and I had worked together before, we played at [Manhattan’s] 92nd Street Y, and had a week’s residence at The Rose Hall with his mom (singer Sandy Stewart),” Cole said during an early morning phone call from his home in Atlanta, before he headed off to his local golf course. “One night he was playing with his trio at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, and he saw me in the audience and invited me to do a song, and then that was when the idea of recording a disc was hatched.
Cole said that from then on the process was quite effortless. “We chose the songs, Bill would make suggestions, and we came up with the repertoire,” he recalls. “It was [executive producer] Joe Fields who later came up with the title Music Maestro Please.”
Though most of the material on the disc consisted of tunes he had never “touched” before, Cole said that the sessions, which took place over two days in the spring of 2006 at The Van Gelder Studio in Englewood, New Jersey, were quite simple. “The only song I had done before was ‘Once in a While,’ and as for the other tunes—’You Could Hear a Pin Drop’ and ‘I’ve Never Been The Same’—it was fun to get to know the other tunes.” “The sessions were great, it was very easy,” he recalls. “Bill is very laidback, and there were a lot of laughs during the recording.” Responding to a comment on the disc’s overall live feel, he noted that it was pretty much how it happened “Most of the songs were done in one or two takes; it was almost like a live performance.”
Bill Charlap is “an excellent musician, and he knows how to listen,” Cole states, adding that he performed at the Charlap’s recent wedding, was very pleased at the results and also by the feedback he’s been getting from fans and fellow musicians.
“Everybody loved it, and so did I,” Cole says. “I don’t often go back and listen to a record after I’ve finished it, but I was hearing it during Bill’s wedding and thought the sound was so great—Peter Washington really hit some great notes in some of the tunes.
When asked about touring with Charlap’s trio or other future plans, he says that there is nothing scheduled right now. “The disc just came out, and I haven’t thought about any follow-up plans. I will continue to do my thing for now, and maybe we’ll be able to do something together later on.
Ernest Barteldes (AllAboutJazz)
