Cold Fact

Cold Fact is the debut album from American singer-songwriter Rodriguez. It was released in the USA on the Sussex label in March 1970. It is notable that while the album sold very poorly in the United States (Rodriguez was himself an unknown in the States), it managed to sell well in both South Africa and Australia without Rodriguez himself even knowing.^[3]

In South Africa and Australia

In 1971 the album was released in South Africa by A&M Records, who were by then the owners of the Sussex label. In 1976, several thousand copies of Cold Fact were found in a New York warehouse and sold out in Australia in a few weeks. It went to #23 on the Australian album charts, staying on the charts for 55 weeks. In 1998 Cold Fact was awarded a platinum disc in South Africa, and was 5x platinum in Australia. Rodriguez has since toured South Africa and Australia with much success, but remains relatively unknown in his native country of USA.^[3]

Cold Fact was featured as a "Buried Treasure" in the August 2002 issue of Mojo.

Track listing

Personnel

There were no musicians credited on the original album sleeve, but Rodriguez and Mike Theodore have filled in the gaps:^[3]

• Rodriguez – vocals, acoustic guitar
• Dennis Coffey – electric guitar
• Mike Theodore – keyboards, brass and string arrangements
• Andrew Smith – drums
• Bob Pangborn – percussion
• Bob Babbitt – bass
• Detroit Symphony (Leader Gordon Staples) – strings
• Leader Carl Reatz – horns (trombones, baritone sax)
• Friends & family of Joyce Vincent & Telma Hopkins – childrens choir on "Gommorah"

• Recorded in Detroit in August & September 1969.
• Arranged and produced by Mike Theodore and Dennis Coffey.
• Engineering by Mike Theodore at Tera-Shirma Studio, Detroit.
• Ray Hall at R.C.A. New York – remix
• Ransier and Anderson – photography
• Nancy Chester (See / Hear! & How!) – cover design

Samples

"Sugar Man" was sampled in "You're Da Man", from the 2001 Nas album Stillmatic.

References