RELEASED MY 1st SINGLE!
Lulu’s Back in Town
Featuring:
Steve Cole (piano), Joe La Barbera (drums), Darek Oles (bass).
Listen on Pandora (coming soon)
Some of my best memories are from when I was around five, six years old when my dad, home from his job as a physician, would be playing the piano in our living room and my brother Louis and I, freshly bathed, would beg my mom to get the apple box full of rhythm instruments down from the hall closet so we could jam with him. (Let me just pause here to say: Absolutely nothing slaps harder than a 5-year-old using claves like drumsticks on a tambourine while her father plays Chick Corea’s “La Fiesta.”)
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As I got older, the rhythm instruments remained in the closet and the instrument I was most excited about was my dad’s trumpet. It reeked of valve oil and disintegrating velvet, and my dad patiently let Louis and I honk away on it until our faces nearly collapsed. So it was a no-brainer when, several years later, I chose trumpet as my instrument for 4th grade music. (See photo.)
I had a lot of fun in Mr. Rav’s class, but there are only so many times one can play “Hot Cross Buns.” Or, more accurately, there are only so many times one’s parents can listen to “Hot Cross Buns.”
And so my dad sat down and transcribed a favorite song in our household, “Lulu’s Back in Town,” and taught me to play it on the horn while he accompanied me on the piano. No disrespect to Mr. Rav, who is an extra-special person and a fabulous music educator, but I think this is really when I turned a corner in my trumpet playing. Once I realized that I could play the songs I knew from those post-bathtime jam sessions, I was in. “Lulu” unlocked music for me; it’s a critical song in my musical development. Which is why, when I decided to make an album (coming this fall!), it was the first song we recorded.
However, “Lulu’s Back in Town” instantly set itself apart from the rest of the tracks on the album – for reasons both practical and sentimental – and I realized that it would be better served as a standalone single.
Allow me to explain.
This track, my first-ever release as a jazz singer, features my father, Steve Cole, on piano. You remember him – from the post-bathtime Chick Corea jam session with the tambourine? Well, I think I forgot to say that he’s not just a piano player, he’s a great piano player. (There was a reason my brother and I were so desperate to play along with him.) I’d be happy to have my dad playing anything with me at all, but it’s even more meaningful that we’re playing “Lulu’s Back in Town” just like we used to do when I was a kid. And the fact that it’s my first release makes it even more special.
But wait – there’s more!
Back around the time that “Lulu” was expanding my musical horizons, my exquisite mother was arranging, as an anniversary gift, some players to come to our house to jam with my dad for the day. Players who weren’t in their pajamas. Players who wouldn’t whack each other with the maracas. Players like Tom Warrington and Joe La Barbera.
Joe being a good sport about me, a child, using his drums.
Louis and I came home from karate one day to find some serious music happening in the living room. Which was immediately disrupted by our presence. And yes, we did take the opportunity to try Tom’s bass (far too large) and Joe’s drums (see photo). Fortunately, my dad had the good sense to record the afternoon. I still have the cassette tape (see other photo).
Insert from the cassette of my dad's day with Tom and Joe. I am a hoarder.
So, imagine my delight when Aarón (my partner, but my producer for the purposes of this story), told me that Joe La Barbera was going to record this track with us. That’s right – Joe La Barbera is the drummer on this single.
For those of you keeping score, that’s some serious full-circle business. Two members of the Steve Cole Trio (For A Day), plus me, now old enough to join, performing the song that launched my passion for playing jazz. And keeping all of us in check is the incomparable Darek Oles on bass, who, as far as I remember, was never in my childhood home after my karate practice, but would have been very welcome. His huge, full sound rounds the track out and drowns out the noise from my happy sobbing.
And an enormous thanks to Harriet Tam for her expert engineering and mixing skills (and friendship and moral support and sense of humor), and to Talley Sherwood for creating a comfortable and welcoming space at Tritone Recording. And thanks to Jimmy Branly for mastering so brilliantly.
So, I hope you enjoy “Lulu’s Back in Town.” Listen alone or with friends. In the kitchen, in the car. Sing along, dance. Or maybe hit a tambourine with some claves.