Freddie Coates

(piano) Born possibly Miss. Delta pianist with a mature blues style. Recorded in 1927, accompanying blues singers Sadie James (Memphis) and Alice Pearson (Chicago). Pearson's 'Greenville Levee Blues', although modelled on Bessie Smith's 'Back Water Blues' reflects own experience, the flooding of Greenville, Miss., in spring 1927. Coates and Pearson were still a team there in the 1930s (from "Deep South Piano" by Karl Gert zur Heide)