George Cole (musician)

George Cole (musician)
George Cole (born October 10, 1960) is an American music producer, composer, lyricist, vocalist, session musician, and guitarist. He fronts his own Gypsy jazz/Uptown Swing band and since early 2014 has been the guitarist for the David Grisman Quintet. Before his acoustic music endeavors, he played electric guitar for the pop rock band Beatnik Beatch and Big Blue Hearts. He played on Chris Isaak's platinum album Forever Blue. Cole is also a teacher, and his students include Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt of Green Day; Ethan Roberts, and Danny Jones.
Early life
Cole grew up in Richmond, California. He attended Kennedy High School. He performed in the band "Young Country" in the late 1970s and The Upstarts in the early 1980s. His favorite childhood band was the Benny Goodman Quartet. He also loved Louis Prima, Keely Smith, The Mills Brothers, Lawrence Welk, Alan Sherman, Dave Clark Five, The Turtles, The Zombies, Country Joe and the Fish, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, and the Beatles.
Guitar instructor
Cole has taught guitar lessons to promising musicians for nearly 30 years. He began teaching guitar lessons in California in the 1980s. He taught Billie Joe Armstrong for ten years and the bassist Mike Dirnt of the punk rock band Green Day. "Cole and Billie Joe would frequently spend afternoons jamming together, free-form style with the teacher winging off as many odd notes as his pupil." He helped arrange their first recording session at RDR studios in San Francisco in 1986.
Armstrong's mother bought him his first electric guitar, which he named "Blue". Cole had bought the Fernandez guitar, a replica of a Fender, from David Margen of the band Santana. "Armstrong fetishized his teacher's guitar, partly because the blue instrument had a sound quality and Van Halen–worthy fluidity he couldn't get from his little red Hohner. He prized it mostly, however, because of his relationship with Cole, another father figure after the death of Andy."
Career
Cole was lead guitarist in the pop rock band Beatnik Beatch from 1984–1988. In Beatnik Beatch he performed with Warren Zevon and Buster Poindexter. Beatnik Beatch has a music video on VH1 which features Cole. The group won a BAMMY – Bay Area Music Award for Best New Major Label Artist.
Cole was a member of the band Big Blue Hearts from 1997–2000. He toured with Joe Walsh of The Eagles, recorded with producer Roy Thomas Baker, and they performed with Robert Cray, Ringo Starr, and Boz Scaggs.
Cole started the gypsy jazz band George Cole Quintet in 2006 and is the Producer, composer, lyricist, Vocalist, and lead guitarist. The band was a five-piece acoustic gypsy jazz group. Cole performed a sold out performance at Carnegie Hall in New York as part of a world flute festival concert to benefit In Defense of Animals. The band performed at a San Francisco Chapter of National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences's (Grammys) celebration.
In January 2014 Cole performed with David "Dawg" Grisman as part of the David Grisman Sextet. Cole was asked to join the David Grisman Sextet, assuming the guitar chair first held by Tony Rice and subsequently Mark O'Connor, Frank Vignola, and Mike Marshall.
Discography
As leader
George Cole (2004)
Riverside Drive (Ocean View, 2010)
George Cole Live (Acoustic Disc, 2015)
Bixou Bixou (Ocean View, 2019)
As sideman
Beatnik Beatch, At the Zula Pool (Industrial, 1986)
Beatnik Beatch, Beatnik Beach (1988)
David Grisman, The David Grisman Sextet (Acoustic Disc, 2016)
References
External links
Official website
1960 births
American male singers
American rock singers
American jazz guitarists
American rock guitarists
American male guitarists
American multi-instrumentalists
Gypsy jazz guitarists
Musicians from Richmond, California
Living people
Singers from California
Guitarists from California
20th-century American guitarists
Jazz musicians from California
20th-century American male musicians
American male jazz musicians