Artists:Frank Cotolo

Frank Cotolo was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1950 and has been involved with music and the industry, in one way or another, for all of his adult life. He began composing music from the day that he learned how to play his first instrument, the guitar. He states that his early musical influences were not rock & roll, but rather classical, film scores, and the music of the '20s, '30s, and '40s. These influences include music by Mozart, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and others. In the late '50s and early '60s he became fascinated with production, studying the recordings of Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, and George Martin. His tastes varied from Antonio Carlos Jobim to The Beatles and from Anthony Newley to The Kinks. In the 1960s he started a band and remained in the same rock-oriented group with only one member change for almost a decade. They played high-school dances, moving on to bars, frat parties, and college auditoriums.

Cotolo then teamed up with lyricist/writer, James Chakedis in the early '70s. The duo wrote hundreds of songs together, as well as the music for an off-Broadway play and a documentary. They soon began their own music publishing firm and built a recording studio to produce their own demos and an ill-fated album of their tunes. By this time he was also playing piano, bass, and dabbling with drums. In 1978 he left New York for Hollywood. Hooking up with the legendary personality Wolfman Jack, Cotolo began another decade long working relationship with the groundbreaking radio-oriented artist. He became Jack's full-time writer (for radio, TV and stage shows) as well as playing the part of Mars, Jack's radio sidekick. With Jack, Cotolo wrote, performed on, and sometimes produced radio programs that were heard around the world.

It wasn't until the 1990s that he got back into music regularly, having left California for Pennsylvania. He developed Cool Noise Studios at his home and set out to write and produce his own music with total artistic freedom as his guide. Living in what many consider the boondocks, Cotolo had little help from other musicians, so his ability to play many instruments, coupled with the wonders of 1990s recording technology, gave him the opportunity to unleash his lush tastes onto tape. Along the way he produced the first-ever CD for a comic book and a successful cassette album of poetry readings and random music. Alone and with help from his wife, Kristen Cotolo and local drummer Tom Castanzo, Cotolo has created a vast catalog of recordings. In mid-'98 he released many of his productions as MP3s and finished work on an album, Seven Squared. For the album, he called upon the talents of many of his former cohorts from the 1960s and 1970s. In 1999, he released another CD entitled Francois Couteau, which contained a couple of tunes that received some rave reviews in France. ~ Larry Belanger, All Music Guide