Jazz Articles
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Richie Cole: Cannonball
by Nicholas F. Mondello
With Cannonball, Richie Cole and his crew deliver fourteen selections, each of which is associated with the album's namesake, Julian Cannonball Adderley. Cole has admired Adderley since their meeting when Cole was a student at Berklee School of Music. The album is a terrific salute and it once more confirms Cole as a leading flamekeeper of the straight-ahead tradition of bop alto sax. Across the session, Cole is animated and energized and delivers his tributes with a ...
read moreRichie Cole: Cannonball
by Rob Rosenblum
Richie Cole and Julian “Cannonball" Adderley. It's as natural as soap and water. In an interview on this site, Cole proclaimed that the famed jazz musician was his favorite altoist. Like Adderley, Cole can cover a wide range of music--from the hardest of hard bop to commercial ditties. And also like Adderley, for Cole the audience comes first. The two Charlie Parker influenced altoists never recorded together, although Cole did get to know Adderley casually. Meeting him and ...
read moreRichie Cole: Latin Lover
by Rob Rosenblum
Last year alto saxophonist/arranger Richie Cole released an album called the Many Minds of Richie Cole. Latin Lover could easily have carried the same title. There are indeed many minds in Cole's head-- often seemingly incompatible with each other. Several of them are in this CD. Cole was grabbed out of Berklee School of Music by Buddy Rich, who needed a replacement for Art Pepper in his big band in 1969 and after being featured with Rich and ...
read moreRichie Cole Alto Madness Orchestra: The Many Minds of Richie Cole
by Rob Rosenblum
Alto saxophonist Richie Cole is a living, breathing anachronism and has arguably been one since he first burst out of Berklee School of Music onto the stage as featured soloist with the Buddy Rich big band in the 1970's. While many of his contemporaries were following the lead of Chuck Berry and The Beatles, Cole was enamored of the music of Charlie Parker and Bird's early disciples like Phil Woods and Cannonball Adderley. Since then he ...
read moreRichie Cole: Have Yourself An Alto Madness Christmas
by Rob Rosenblum
Christmas music is a sort of sub genre of American pop, mostly maudlin and uninspiring in its lyrics, harmony and melody. Yet, it is a perennial magnet for jazz artists. On the other end of the spectrum is Richie Cole, a brash altoist and sort of a merry prankster bebop artist. Fans and critics alike have delighted in his ability to take the complex structures of the music of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and mold them into ...
read moreRichie Cole: Pittsburgh
by Jack Bowers
After a lifetime of movin' on that has taken him from Trenton, NJ, to cities, towns and hamlets across the country and around the world, it seems that alto saxophonist Richie Cole, now fifty-eight, is at last ready to settle down and plant some roots. As he declares in his latest album's opening number, I Have a Home in Pittsburgh"--and there's a palpable sense that this time he means it. If Cole's wandering days are indeed behind him, what remains ...
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