Freddy Cole — jazz artist, Nat King Cole’s brother
Freddy Cole, a pianist and vocalist who spent much of his musical life in the shadow of his brother Nat King Cole, but whose durable talents carried him through a triumphant latecareer resurgence, died Saturday in Atlanta. He was 88.
The cause was complications of a cardiovascular condition, his manager, Suzi Reynolds, said.
Cole leaned toward a more explicitly bluesy style than his brother, who started out playing lively jump blues in the 1930s before mellowing out his sound and becoming one of the most popular crooners of the 20th century. Freddy Cole sang in a plainspoken manner, always eyetoeye with his audience, in a way that Nat — whose voice was floating, mythic, serene — never did. The title of Freddy Cole’s debut album, “Waiter, Ask the Man to Play the Blues” (1964), reflected the smoky barroom aura of his music.
Yet there was no mistaking the affinity between their vocal styles: warm and welcoming, every syllable enunciated with loving care and an inner glow. For Freddy, that resemblance proved a blessing and a curse.
As he aged, he embraced it — even as his voice accrued a slightly weatherbeaten quality that Nat, felled at 45 by lung cancer, never had the chance to develop. In Freddy’s case, the markings of age only added to his elegance and expressiveness. In a 1999 profile for the New York Times, critic David Hajdu called him “one of the few male jazz singers these days who is still, at 67, at the height of his powers.”
Cole was nearing his 60th birthday by the time he finally stepped forward and firmly declared his musical independence. And when he did, it was with a wink.
In 1991, Sunnyside Records released “I’m Not My Brother,
I’m Me,” Cole’s first album to get widespread attention. On the title track, a strutting secondperson testimonial written at the beginning of his career, he sings:
Well, I’m here to entertain you, in my own special way
And if I sound like Nat, well, what can I say?
Now, I offer no apolog y, Because I am not my brother, I’m me.
But at the same time, he included a medley of his brother’s songs, followed by “He Was the King,” a tender tribute. Backed by a guitarist and a bassist — the format of Nat’s renowned trio — he sounded utterly willing to play ambassador and champion of his brother’s legacy.
With that album, he finally struck a comfortable balance: He made his disavowal a part of the act.
“The case of Freddy Cole is unique in contemporary music,” Hajdu wrote, “because his littlebrother status appears to be both his lifeline and a shackle.”
After his brother’s death in 1965, Cole resisted calls from promoters seeking to bill him as a tribute act, and kept a relatively low profile. For a time in the 1980s, he was playing six nights a week at the RitzCarlton in Atlanta; he selfreleased a couple of albums around that time on his own label.
Freddy Cole is survived by a daughter, Crystal Cole; a son, Lionel, a professional musician; and four grandchildren.
Giovanni Russonello is a New York Times writer.