“Crucial Eddy Cotton” is a longtime well established musician whose talents span a wide range of musical genres. His combination of poignant lyrics, potent guitar licks, musical versatility, and a vast catalog of songs has made him a favorite with fans.
The fact remains that I never met Eddy during the heyday of our time playing some of the same gigs and venues, and was amazed when we met at Eco Relics in Jacksonville, Florida. We seem to have been passing ships for many years.
I count my many blessings to be the times that since then we have been able to play together.
Eddy recently shared some memories with me and it’s uncanny the similarities we shared with the old ‘gig’ scene in Jacksonville.
“I met Arvid Smith at Manapaders. He was playing with The Great Invisibles. The singer/front man was in my theory class at FJC. One day he hands me a flyer, “You seem cool. You might like my band.” I went that weekend, walked into a packed out joint walked across the dance floor-there’s Arvid, his mic suspended in a mannequin arm from the ceiling. I asked if he knew any musicians that wanted to be in a band. He called over the mic, “Dennis, Cleve?…I got a live one,”…
“Two weeks later, Mad Love opened for the GIs. The first Glam punk band in Jax.”
“I taught the bass player the parts. Dennis Wilson was an amazing drummer. Cleve Hall, the other guy singing passed last year.”
There are some things that really matter, like a shared vision.
If the singer wants to be a star, the guitarist wants to play a different style and the bassist and drummer are in it to smoke weed and jam…might not work out.
—Crucial Eddy Cotton
“There are few people who can wear a guitar like Ed. The instrument hangs off his shoulder like a well tailored suit. Like a well-dressed man, it’s all about confidence. He knows what he can and cannot do with the instrument and stays in that pocket. It always sounds great.“
-Dan MacDonald, The Florida Times Union
“Ed Cotton, through his band Pretty Boy Freud, created a legacy that continues years after he broke up the band. People in Jacksonville still comment on how entertaining and fun the band was and how much they miss them. Ed maintained the quality of the band by always having the best musicians the city had to offer; and most of those musicians will tell you that being in that band, playing behind Ed, was some of the best times they have experienced playing music.”
– Darren Ronan, Ronan School of Music
From 1987-2004 the North Florida music scene was dominated by one band, Pretty Boy Freud, with front man Eddy Cotton.
Freudian Slip started after the famous Pretty Boy Freud (aka Ed Cotton) decided to retire from the very active, hard-working band Pretty Boy Freud. The Freudian Slip Band is made up of past members of Pretty Boy Freud and friends of Ed Cotton.
The thing that springs to mind about Ed is that he never, ever takes the road well traveled. He always has a unique and intelligent approach to everything he does. That’s why he’s been as successful as he has. I really like Ed a lot. Clever man.
Steve Shanholtzer
On June 3, 2018, Eco Relics of Jacksonville hosted Cowford Jam 2018. The fundraising event to benefit Cowford Archaeology will help us continue our Jacksonville Wall Project. The purpose of the project is to document the wall and the defensive forts built around Jacksonville by the Union Army in 1864. The day was a success thanks to the generosity of the Eco Relics owners, Annie and Michael Murphy, Tracy Rigdon and the entire staff. Crucial Eddy Cotton and the Uncanny Valley Boys entertained the crowd with a selection of train songs and more in recognition of Jacksonville’s Rail Yard District.
I first knew Eddie in the fall of 1979. It was my first-year teaching at Wolfson High School and Eddie was a senior. I don’t think I had him in any of my classes, but he hung out with a lot of the kids that I did teach. He was energetic, curious and fun to be around. Everybody liked him.
Over time, he popped up in all kinds of surprising ways and places. Like everybody else, I got to be a big fan of Pretty Boy Freud. I got to know Eddie and his music better through our mutual friend, Landon Walker, whose show The Metro on WJCT Stereo 90 (I think it was called at the time) was the absolute voice of the arts here in Jacksonville. Landon would do pop up live broadcasts from somewhere around town on every Friday the 13th, and Eddie was a mainstay of those shows.
He did some live reports from New Orleans during Mardi Gras that were also especially wonderful. A long time ago, I approached him with the idea of performing some hymns together – songs like “Whispering Hope” and “Angels Hov’ring Round” – for some AIDS related benefit events. He was always really open to doing that, but we never got around to it…not yet anyway! When I was at Theatre Jacksonville, we did a production of the Claire Boothe Luce play, The Women, and Eddie surprised me with a wonderful watercolor of an old photograph of George Cukor strolling through the studio lot with the cast from the 1930s film – only he had replaced Cukor with me! I was astounded by that.
Bob White
He has always been transparent, very clear about who he is, what is going on and what he wants. He’s a generous performer.
Robert White
North Florida’s proud folk music heritage reaches back more than half a century. The region claims many talented artists and songwriters, including Frank Thomas, Bob Patterson, Charlie Robertson and Crucial Eddy Cotton while hundreds of solo, duo and group performers regularly inspire audiences at local venues. The Stephen Foster State Park in White Springs is the home of the Florida Folk Festival, the longest continuous state-sponsored folk festival in the country, held every year on the banks of the Suwannee River.
Author Ron Johnson is currently serving as president of the North Florida Folk Network (NFFN) and he writes a semi-daily blog for the Florida Times-Union (Today in Florida History”?). He is a regular participant at the Florida Folk Festival, Barberville and the Will McLean Festivals and he writes and records his own original songs, many of them about Florida. He won the 2011 Will McLean Song of the Year with his tune “Rescue Train, and has won several song contests in Fernandina and St. Augustine.”
North Florida Folk Music: History & Tradition
What I fucking love about Ed Cotton isn’t that he’s a spectacularly talented musician, its that his wit is wry and his intelligence is unconcealable no matter what he is doing. Eddy has injected this amazingly conscious perspective into the city’s night life and scene for decades and been one of the great voices here because of it.
Stephen Dare – Writer
