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Interview with Cozy Cole
Interviewer: Bill Kirchner
Ohio
April 1980

Bill Kirchner: Today is April 16, 1980.

Cozy Cole: That's right.

BK: The day after taxes. Just got mine in yesterday.

CC: Oh you did. Oh you were one of those last minute boys.

BK: Hm hmm. And I'm getting money back.

CC: Oh that's good.

BK: We're sitting here in Bexley, Ohio, which is a suburb of Columbus and my name is Bill Kirchner and we're talking to one of the great jazz drummers probably, certainly one of the most versatile, and his name is Cozy Cole. I'm just going to cut this tape off for a minute.

...

BK: And we're rolling once again. Cozy, to make things as easy as possible, why don't we just take things in more or less chronological order.

CC: Okay, just as you want them, Bill.

BK: Okay, let's start out when you were, you know, at the very beginning.

CC: At the very beginning? Okay. Well, my school years, especially grammar school and high school was in Leonardo, New Jersey, which is a suburb of Asbury Park and Red Bank, New Jersey, Atlantic Highlands. I went to school, grade school there. Of course my mother died when I was in grade school; father died in high school.

BK: Just to backtrack a step. We should probably get on the record that you were born in East Orange, New Jersey?

CC: East Orange, New Jersey, that's correct.

BK: October 17, 1909, right?

CC: That is correct.

BK: So far, John Chilton is right.

CC: Yes.

BK: I'm sorry to interrupt. So your mother died when, did you say?

CC: My mother died while I was in grade school, and my father died when I was a freshman in high school. And of course during my high school years I was taking manual training and I used to make drum sticks in manual training class and come home, and like the average kid, just beat all over your mother's chairs and tubs and everything.

BK: I'm sure she loved that.

CC: And, but my first inspiration to really see a drummer actually in person was Sonny Greer.

BK: Oh.

CC: He is from Long Branch or Seabright, if I'm not mistaken, and he was the only drummer then, especially Black drummer, working with all the white groups there in Jersey.

BK: This is before he was with Duke?

CC: Oh yeah, way before. And I was still in school when Sonny was playing around, so I used to see Sonny Greer and see him up there throwing his sticks around and just doing everything; he looked good and he was a great showman.

BK: Oh, still is.

CC: Yes. And that's who inspired me at the beginning was Sonny Greer.

BK: Do you remember the names of any of the people he was working with?

CC: No I don't. they were local people, local musicians from around Jersey.

BK: Where were they playing at?

CC: Well there was a fireman's hall where they used to play, the library, and different little halls around Red Bank, Asbury Park, Seabright, Long Branch, Keansburg, around Jersey there, and mostly all of those places where I would read about them playing. I would go and see Sonny.

BK: What would they be doing, like singles?

CC: What do you mean, singles?

BK: Oh weddings, social receptions.

CC: Oh yes, and public dances. Public dances and weddings, I imagine. But the times that I saw him mostly was at the public dances. Libraries and the different halls, fireman's hall and different halls that they would rent for these occasions.

BK: Did you get to meet him at that time?

CC: Yes, I used to carry his drums from his gig, used to take them to my house, and then the next day I would get a bus and take them to his home, and believe it or not, when I first went to New York, oh it was around 1920, '29 around there, Sonny was with Duke Ellington.

BK: Right.

CC: Well I had to be introduced to Sonny all over again then, because I had grown up and he just looked at me and I said, I'm the kid that used to carry your drums from a gig or something, maybe you were busy, you know, maybe with a chick or something, you wasn't married then, you know, so I would take your drums to my home and the next day deliver them to you. And Sonny used to give me fifty cents, a dollar to do that, which was great money in those days, and me being a kid, you know, I just thought that was just beautiful.

BK: That's quite a deal you got there.

CC: Oh yes.

BK: I think he got the better of it though.

CC: And so that was my first inspiration was Sonny Greer.

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