Cook, Richard 1957–

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Cook, Richard 1957–

PERSONAL: Born 1957, in Kew, England.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Penguin Putnam, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014.

CAREER: Writer, editor. Jazz Review, editor; formerly associated with Verve Records.

WRITINGS:

(With Brian Morton) The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP, and Cassette, Penguin Books (London, England), 1992, 6th revised edition published as The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 2002.

Blue Note Records: The Biography, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 2001, Justin, Charles & Co. (Boston, MA), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: British jazz scholar Richard Cook wrote, with Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP, and Cassette, and the title of which had evolved by its sixth edition to become The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD. The book has grown, noted Choice reviewer J. Farrington, with the result that the second edition "dwarfs" the first by an addition of 500 pages.

In the book, Morton describes himself as "presently living in Scotland, in what is essentially a CD warehouse attached to a large vegetable patch." Cook, on the other hand, "was converted to jazz by the likes of Jelly Roll Morton and Bix Beiderbecke at about the time the Beatles were splitting up." The coauthors assign a star rating to every jazz recording, with four being "very fine; an outstanding record that yields consistent pleasure and is a splendid example of the artist's work," and "a tragic misdemeanor." Artists are listed alphabetically, so that the Parkers—Charlie, Errol, Evan, Kim, and Leo—follow each other. Included are under-represented British musicians, and Cook also comments on Italian jazz.

Downbeat critic John Corbett wrote of The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD that "the guide's nondivisive approach also asserts the value of creative music and free improvisation as crucial, if demographically marginal, parts of the jazz market." In Billboard Drew Wheeler felt that the book would have benefited from more biographical information, while fellow writer Chris Morris noted that the by-then 1,300-page volume "is limited only by what is currently available in print…. In some cases, the unavailability of certain works leaves gaping holes in a major artist's discography."

Stephen Metcalf wrote in the New York Times that, "after years of compulsive reading, buying, and listening, I can attest: their judgement is infallible, delivered with a dry, literate, and very English mordancy." Metcalf concluded by writing that "sometimes jazz seems to deliver it all: adolescence and adulthood, jubilation and melancholy, violation and refined taste, all effortlessly merged, and that wonderful offhand koan from Louis Armstrong feels true: 'Jazz is only what you are.' Thank you, Mr. Morton and Mr. Cook."

In reviewing Blue Note Records: The Biography in the New York Times Book Review, Gene Santoro called Cook "a keen and perceptive listener whose musical descriptions are generally vivid, challenging, and witty." In the volume Cook relates the history of an extraordinary recording company that was begun by two German immigrants, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, in 1939. Devoted to jazz, the pair recorded the best music of its kind for twenty years before making a profit. Beginning with the boogie-woogie piano of such traditional masters as Sidney Bechet, to hard bop, they eventually recorded such greats as Art Blakey, Wayne Shorter, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and Cecil Taylor, a representation of their recording artists of the 1950s and 1960s.

They released their first 45rpm single in 1954. It contained two titles from a Horace Silver session, "Message from Kenya" and "Nothing but the Soul," both of which feature the drumming of Blakey, with percussionist Sabu Martinez sitting in on the first title and Blakey going solo for the flip side. Blakey's Jazz Messengers developed talents like Shorter, Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, and Wynton Marsalis.

Wolff was an avid photographer, and many of the unique photographs that graced the covers of long-playing albums have since become iconic. Studio engineer Rudy Van Gelder set up shop in his parents' living room in Hackensack, New Jersey. Cook told Liane Hansen during an interview for National Public Radio's Weekend Edition that "there's just something about Blue Note mixes, the way Van Gelder managed to balance loud instruments and soft instruments in such a way that for the first time, in many cases, you're hearing the bass on jazz records and you're hearing the different levels of drum work between the drums and the cymbals. For their time, they are remarkable sonic documents."

Blue Note's first commercial hit, Lee Morgan's Sidewinder album, was released in 1964. Ironically, it was this success that changed the company forever. Unable to meet the demand for the recording, they agreed to a takeover by Liberty Records. Lion retired in 1967, unwilling to deal with the corporate pressures he found so tiring, and Wolff continued on. By the time Wolff died in 1971, the label was suffering under the popularity of rock. By 1979, Blue Note as a jazz label no longer existed. The original Blue Note label is now part of Capitol Records, which records such stylists as Grammy award-winning Nora Jones.

Don Rose, reviewing Blue Note Records for the Jazz Institute of Chicago Web site, noting that Jones' album Come away with Me, "only loosely related to jazz, if at all, probably made more money than the entire label earned under Lion and Wolff. What's wonderful about those guys is the commitment and dedication to the music they showed, scraping along for the better part of two decades … but following their own aesthetic and sense of excellence." Rose concluded by saying that in Blue Note Records Cook "does a wonderful job … of relating the label's extraordinary history; he's not only an excellent journalist, but a fine critic whose masterly program notes on scores of records and recording sessions shed light on the music itself." A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote that Cook "does all that could be asked to bring the Blue Note house style into focus," and concluded by calling Blue Note Records "opinionated, encyclopedic, unselfconsciously hip: the full drop on Blue Note."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Billboard, February 13, 1993, Chris Morris, review of The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP, and Cassette, p. 40; June 26, 1993, Drew Wheeler, review of The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP, and Cassette, p. 47.

Choice, December, 1999, J. Farrington, review of The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD (4th edition), p. 686.

Downbeat, October, 1994, John Corbett, review of The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP, and Cassette, p. 60.

Economist, December 8, 2001, review of Blue Note Records: The Biography, p. 74.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2003, review of Blue Note Records, p. 438.

Library Journal, April 1, 2003, Ronald S. Russ, review of Blue Note Records, p. 100.

New York Times, January 21, 2001, Stephen Metcalf, review of The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP, and Cassette, p. AR35.

New York Times Book Review, April 27, 2003, Gene Santoro, review of Blue Note Records, p. 24.