Jude Anthony Cole was born on June 18, 1960, in Carbon Cliff, Illinois and grew up in East Moline, Illinois. When he was 9, he started developing his passion for music, performing in country bars in his hometown of East Moline. He never had any doubts about becoming a musician or his lust for big cities. "At 18, I figured I'd had enough cold weather, so I took my first plane ride, to L.A., and got lucky",  landing an immediate job as lead guitarist and backup singer with Moon Martin and the Ravens. "If it weren't for Moon, I don't think I'd be a songwriter," he says.
Jude made it big when his second solo album, "A View From 3rd Street" was release. It is a collection of ten of 88 songs penned over the space of 2 years while Cole lived on a second floor apartment overlooking one of L.A.'s most colorful thoroughfares. Considering the results the view must have been pretty damn good. A View From Third Street is a rock and roll hologram, a telling fragment of a larger world seen through the eyes of Jude. With a sound big and meaty, a sound dark-brewed and emotive, his songs paint a picture of love in the 90's. The first single, "Baby It's Tonight" was an instant hit.
When you listen to his music, you can tell that he is a performer, not a musical money hog for some big record company.

Jude's life story is anything but a fairy tale success. Seventeen years in L.A. left its mark. While he had become a seasoned performer, he was also seduced by the fast lane. Based on some of those experiences,  (his addiction) he wrote "Heaven's Last Attempt" for his wife and praises anyone who has never experimented with drugs. His new start meant paying dues with performances in coffee houses and mid-sized clubs. He viewed it as a chance to renew intimacy with his audience. "It's humbling, but it's also refreshing. I have to reach people one by one," said. Since then Jude has returned to California to live.

Struggling past drug addiction and depression, Cole lost a record deal and lost long time manager and friend Ed Leffler suddenly to cancer right after his wife became pregnant.

The song First Your Money (Then Your Clothes) is described below in Jude's own words:

"My father's a gambler. That's the way he's made his living, first as a pool hustler and then as a poker player. He'd come home from playing cards and when he'd win, we'd go to the music store, I was 14 years old and had a Les Paul and a Marshall stack. When he'd lose, he'd pull out his pants pocket and say, Well, that's the way it goes. First your money and then your clothes. Me, I'm a poor pool player. That's what I do in my spare time. I play every day and I gamble every day, and the parallels are kind of uncanny. It's taught me quite a few lessons - about life and about gambling."

After releasing "I Don't Know Why I Act This Way" in 1995, Jude's record label, Island Records, dropped him.

In 1997 and 1998, Jude was working on a group effort called "Watertown" but dropped the idea. Currently there are a few new demo songs of Jude's floating around out there from these Watertown recordings. Jude has since released a  CD under his own name. The original title was Falling Home, but was changed to Next Big Thing, but has been renamed "Falling Home" again. Jude has formed his own company, Watertown Productions.