Cold Fact

Cold Fact
Studio album by Rodriguez
Released	March 1970
Recorded	August–September 1969
Genre	Rock, soul, blues, folk
Length	32:23
Label	Sussex Light in the Attic (U.S., 2008) Blue Goose/RCA (Australia) A&M Records (South Africa)
Producer	Mike Theodore, Dennis Coffey
Rodriguez chronology
Cold Fact (1970) Coming from Reality (1971)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[1]
Pitchfork	[2]
The New Zealand Herald	[3]
Rate Your Music	[4]

Cold Fact is the debut album from American singer-songwriter Rodriguez. It was released in the United States 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 U.S.), it managed to sell well in both South Africa and Australia,^[5] and Rodriguez toured 1979 in Australia.^[6]

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 No. 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 five-times platinum in Australia. Rodriguez has since toured South Africa and Australia with much success, but remained relatively unknown in his native country of the USA.^[5] This began to change after the reissues of his albums in the U.S. by Light in the Attic Records in 2008 and 2009, and even further in 2012 with the Academy Award winning documentary film Searching for Sugar Man, which soon led to appearances on major American television shows like 60 Minutes and The Late Show with David Letterman.

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:^[5]

• 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 and family of Joyce Vincent and Telma Hopkins – children's choir on "Gommorah"

• Recorded in Detroit in August and 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.

Compilations

"Sugar Man" was the opening track on David Holmes' 2002 compilation Come Get It I Got It.

Chart performance

Certifications

References

External links

• Cold Fact
• Cold Fact Rodriguez