A standout alto sax player, Richie Cole spent his career putting an accessible, exciting face on bebop when the style seemed to be going out of vogue. Cole was born on February 29, 1948, in New Jersey. His father ran a nightclub in Trenton, so it wasn’t surprising when Cole received a scholarship from jazz magazine DownBeat in 1966 to study at the Berklee School of Music. He lasted there a few years before heading out on the road with the Buddy Rich Big Band, followed by a stint with Lionel Hampton’s ensemble.
His solo debut, Trenton Makes, the World Takes, arrived in 1976, and established a precedent that would follow Cole throughout his career: taking a familiar melody and making jazz out of it. Theme songs from television shows and movies were frequent subjects for this sort of interpretation, as exemplified on his album West Side Story, which combined original pieces with recognizable motifs from the popular musical.
But beyond transmogrifying the theme from “The Price is Right” into jazz, Cole’s primary intent was the preservation and perpetuation of the bebop style. As fusion began to take hold in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Cole strove to emphasize the exciting and joyful aspects of bop, playing in a style that came to be known as “alto madness,” which also served as the title for an album in 1977. He would collaborate with other jazz figures, like pianist Bobby Enriquez (The Wild Man Meets the Madman, 1981) and saxophone icon Art Pepper (Return to Alto Acres, 1982). Later in life, he worked as an educator and operated his own label, through which he released records until his death on May 2, 2020.
