Jazz breaking news: Pure Class From Freddy Cole At Pizza Express Jazz Club

With a jazz score by Bebo Valdés, Nat King Cole’s younger brother Freddy Cole also sings wonderfully on the soundtrack as the voice of his brother. And last night Freddy played piano and sang, sometimes seated, sometimes standing at a separate microphone, accompanied by the band, at the Pizza Express Jazz Club where he completes a short run tonight.

It was an evening of wonderful songs delivered in a style few could ever hope to match. The two sets included songs from his High Note albums The Dreamer In Me: Live At Dizzy’s Club and the new Freddy Cole Sings Mr B [as in Eckstine]. Billy Eckstine’s big band in the 1940s featured a who’s who of great jazz musicians including famously Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie with Sarah Vaughan adding vocals and top arrangers such as Tadd Dameron writing the charts. Eckstine led and also played trumpet at times, and as a singer had some pop hits.

Freddy Cole’s choice of numbers was partly a welcome reminder of some of the songs associated with an important figure from jazz history who is sometimes overlooked but whose importance is secure. The audience on a very rainy evening were slightly stiff at first but began to relax by the end of the first song. After the superbly sunny ‘You’re Sensational’ and the lovely Eckstine song ‘Pretty One’ the audience was rapt for the duration and people queued up to talk to Freddy who happily signed CDs and chatted during the break between sets. Randy Napoleon’s tasteful guitar accompaniment, Curtis Boyd’s beautiful brush work and Elias Bailey’s carefully weighted bass were more than the sum of the parts and the evening was a pleasure from start to finish. Listen out for Freddy’s voice if you’re sitting in a cinema when the film opens in November.

For tickets to tonight’s show go to www.pizzaexpresslive.co.uk For more on the film go to bit.ly/dqpw63