Bill Cole

Bill Cole ( born in 1937 in Pittsburgh as William Shadrack Cole ) is an American jazz musician, ethnomusicologist and professor.

Bill Cole specialized in non-European instruments such as the Ghanaian Atenteben, the Chinese suona, Korean Sohojok and piri, South Indian Nadaswaram, the North Indian shehnai, Tibetan trumpet and the Australian didjeridu. He earned the Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University with a dissertation on the music of John Coltrane.

In addition to his many years of academic work, he also worked with Ornette Coleman, Jayne Cortez, Julius Hemphill, Sam Rivers, James Blood Ulmer and Fred Ho Cole founded and directed the Untempered ensemble in which, inter alia, Sam Furnace, William Parker, Cooper - Moore, Joe Daley and Warren Smith play. Under his own name, he presented several albums for the label Boxholder, the album Proverbs for Sam most recently in 2005, dedicated to the recently deceased Sam Furnace.

From 1972 to 1974 he was Professor of Music at Amherst College, after which he worked until 1990 at Dartmouth College. Later he taught until his retirement in the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University. Cole has published two books about the jazz musician Miles Davis, and in 2001 a biography of John Coltrane.

Disco Graphical Notes

• Live in Greenfield, Massachusetts ( Boxholder, 1999)
• Seasoning the Greens ( Boxholder, 2001)
• Duets & Solos, Vol 1 ( Boxholder, 2001)
• Proverbs for Sam ( Boxholder, 2005)
• Billy Bang / Bill Cole ( Shadrack, 2010)

Writings

• The Style of John Coltrane, 1955-1967. Ph.D. Dissertation. Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.
• Miles Davis: A Musical Biography. W. Morrow Publishers, 1974.
• Miles Davis: The Early Years. Da Capo Press, 1994.
• John Coltrane. Da Capo Press, 2001.