Cozy Cole

Cozy Cole (Columbus, Ohio, October 17, 1909 - Columbus, Ohio, January 29, 1981) was an American great jazz music drummer. He had his professional beginnings at the end of the 1920s, with the pianist Jelly Roll Morton, and he became drummer Cozy Cole forever. Later he performed with saxophonist Benny Carter and the Cab Calloway orchestra. In the 1940s he worked as a drummer for the Benny Goodman Orchestra, with whom he appeared in the film Make my Music. Around this same time he became the first black musician to join the CBS orchestra in New York. In 1949 he joined the trumpeter Louis Armstrong's All Stars orchestra, with which he toured and recorded until 1953. After leaving the All Stars, he formed his own ensemble, which dissolved in 1969; in that same year he joined that of his friend and colleague Jonah Jones. Later he founded the Cole-Krupa School of Percussion with the prominent drummer Gene Krupa in New York. Cole was a professor at the Juilliard School in New York. In 1976 he was a renowned artist-in-residence and student musician at Capitol University. He was considered as one of the greatest drummers, possessing a perfect technique that allowed him to maintain a balance between the soloist airs and the disciplined integration in the ensemble. Cozy Cole was established at a time when jazz ensembles and soloists were outstanding; thus Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Fats Waller, Coleman Hawkins, Jonah Jones, Benny Goodman; Among his albums, it is worth remembering: Crescendo in Drums and Paradiddle, which he performed in the Benny Goodman orchestra; Shufflin'at the Hollywood and When Lights are Low, with the Lionel Hampton orchestra; Topsy, 1958, which was the first recording of a drum solo, of which over a million copies were sold.