Early life Cosey was born in
Chicago,
Illinois. He was the only child of a musical family. His father and mother wrote for
Louis Jordan and
Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson and his father played for
Sidney Bechet and
Josephine Baker. Following the death of his father, Cosey and his mother moved to
Phoenix, Arizona, where he spent his teenage years and began developing his guitar style.
Early career Prior to joining the Miles Davis band in 1973, Cosey was a busy session guitarist with
Chess Records, playing on records by
Jerry Butler,
John Klemmer,
Fontella Bass ("
Rescue Me"), He was an early member of the Pharaohs, and a group with drummer
Maurice White and bassist
Louis Satterfield that eventually evolved into
Earth, Wind & Fire. Some of his pre-Miles jazz playing is available on albums by
Phil Cohran's Artistic Heritage Ensemble. After joining Davis, Cosey performed on the albums
Get Up with It,
Dark Magus,
Agharta and
Pangaea. By 1975, Cosey had developed a remarkably advanced guitar approach—involving numerous alternative tunings, guitars restrung in unusual patterns and a post-Hendrix palette of distortion, wah-wah and guitar synth effects—that has influenced many adventurous guitarists, including
Henry Kaiser and
Vernon Reid. Following the 1975 break-up of the Miles Davis band, Cosey largely disappeared from public view. After performing on the title track of
Herbie Hancock's
Future Shock (1983), he did not appear on record again until
Akira Sakata's ''Fisherman's.com'' (with Sakata,
Bill Laswell and
Hamid Drake) in 2000. Throughout the '80s, he was involved in a number of Chicago- and New York-based groups with various musicians, but no recordings have been released. In 1987, he replaced
Bill Frisell in the trio Power Tools with bassist
Melvin Gibbs and drummer
Ronald Shannon Jackson (a live recording is available through RSJ's website).
2000s In 2001, he started a group called Children of Agharta to explore the electric Miles Davis repertoire. The first line-up was Cosey,
Gary Bartz,
John Stubblefield,
Matt Rubano, J. T. Lewis, and DJ
Johnny Juice Rosado (studio DJ for
Public Enemy). The group's booking agency was listing the band as a quartet of Cosey, Bartz, Melvin Gibbs and Doni Hagen. In 2003, Cosey appeared on an episode of American television's ''
The People's Court'', successfully suing a promoter for failing to pay fully for a Children of Agharta gig. Cosey was also a featured soloist with the group
Burnt Sugar on their album
The Rites. In 2004, Cosey appeared in the
Godfathers and Sons episode of
Martin Scorsese's documentary series
The Blues. The episode followed Marshall Chess and
Chuck D (of
Public Enemy) reuniting the musicians from
Muddy Waters'
Electric Mud album to record a new track. In July 2006, Cosey was fleetingly glimpsed during the finale of
Bill Laswell's PBS Soundstage concert (his performance having been edited out of the broadcast). In 2003, Cosey scored a short film, directed by Eli Mavros, entitled
Alone Together. Cosey and Mavros had met the previous year during production of Mark Levin's episode for the PBS Blues series. After appearing on Eli's college blues radio show, Shake Em On Down, on New York University's radio station, 89.1 FM WNYU, he agreed to score the film. In the spirit of jazz and spontaneity, the soundtrack to the film was improvised by Cosey in real time over several takes, with several different instruments; no two takes were the same. He played guitar (using several distortion pedals, often bowing the strings like a violin), African thumb piano, and a
zither given to him by Miles Davis. The film went on to show at several small film festivals. In 2007-08, Cosey contributed to the CD
Miles from India, which celebrates the music of Miles Davis. It features many former Miles sidemen and Indian musicians, with Cosey playing on five tracks: "Ife (Fast)", "It's About That Time", "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down", "Great Expectations", and "Ife (Slow)".
Death Pete Cosey died on May 30, 2012, of complications following surgery at Vanguard Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Although he spent most of his life in Chicago, he was living in nearby
Evanston, Illinois. ==Instruments and equipment==