Watch Cool Uncle’s Charmingly Strange ‘Never Knew Love Before’ Video
Cool Uncle — the unlikely duo of producer Jack Splash and career crooner Bobby Caldwell — have shared an endearingly goofy video for their cut, “Never Knew Love Before.”
The clip places Caldwell, clad in sunglasses, suit and fedora, dragging on a cigarette, in the midst of a kaleidoscopic melange of dancers and trippy animations. It’s a strange but engrossing scene, not unlike “Never Knew Love Before,” which deftly mixes Caldwell’s velvet vocals with Jack Splash’s vibrant, funked-out production.
Caldwell has recorded and released music regularly since emerging as a solo act in 1978. Though his only Top 10 hit was that year’s “What You Won’t Do for Love,” his output over the next 30 years was prolific and his songs have been recorded by Roberta Flack, Neil Diamond, Chicago and, more recently, Jessie Ware. Jack Splash, meanwhile, has produced for an array of artists including Alicia Keys, R. Kelly, Jennifer Hudson and Cee-Lo Green.
Cool Uncle came about after Caldwell’s wife received a Google alert for an interview in which Jack Splash name-checked her husband as an influence. The pair hit it off on the phone and recorded their self-titled debut — which arrived last year — over a series of sessions, with breaks to accommodate the singer’s tour schedule and the producer’s other projects.
“I looked at it like we were own little weird garage band,” Splash told Rolling Stone. “We came with open hearts, open minds and a bunch of weird ideas. And we started everything from scratch.”