Saxophonist Richie Cole 'Plays Ballads & Love Songs,' RCP Records [REVIEW]

"I don't play the saxophone, I sing the saxophone," says Richie Cole in the liner notes to his first all-ballad album in a glorious 45-year career. Richie Cole Plays Ballads & Love Songs, on his own Richie Cole Presents label, has the 68-year old Jersey boy from Trenton, now based in Pittsburgh, blowing sweet and low, soulful and syncopated, his tone, indeed, like a human voice with all the right quivers.

The longtime bebopper has loved his Alto Madness alter-ego, ever since he recorded an album of the same name with vocalist Eddie Jefferson in 1977. Cole and his actress fiancé, Brenda Vaccaro, had the unfortunate experience of witnessing Jefferson's 1979 murder after a Detroit gig at Baker's Keyboard Lounge. "He died right in front of me," remembers Cole in those same notes. "It changed my life. I really went down the tubes."

Among the highlights on this Mark Perna-produced 11-track beauty are Nat King Cole's 1963 "That Sunday That Summer," Johnny Mathis's 1957 #1 "Chances Are" and, inexplicably, the longtime socialist anthem "The Internationale" which dates back to the 1800s. "Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered," from the 1940 Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey, gets a loving, swaying misty-eyed interpretation. The title tune from the 1966 movie Alfie follows the Dionne Warwick 1968 #5 hit template, only instead of Warwick's Burt Bacharach-produced sultry tones, it's Cole's mellifluous human horn insinuating itself melodically on your brain to the point where you won't be able stop humming it for the rest of the day.

You cannot make an album like this-ripe for seduction purposes-without a solid supporting cast. To that end,producer Perna, who also plays bass, has garnered two of Pittsburgh's finest: guitarist Eric Susoeff and drummer Vince Taglieri. The former's solos are in the mode of Wes Montgomery and the latter's brush-work is like the fluttering of butterfly wings. This, then, is some high-class make-out music.

TagsRichie Cole, REVIEW, Eddie Jefferson, Mark Perna