If the idea of a “journeying” musician has substance then the man known professionally as Junior Cook embodies it as easily as Brew Moore, whose recordings with the wayward and largely forgotten trumpeter Tony Fruscella still seem to be under the radar over six decades after they were captured for posterity.
The profile of Cook’s recordings as a member of an acclaimed edition of the Horace Silver Quintet is comparatively higher, yet Cook’s overall profile, and thus his legacy, seems to rest heavily upon them. There are (far from uniquely) many reasons for this, not the least of them being his apparent lack of assertiveness. Hence, the paucity of albums under his own name.
Courtney M. Nero notably falls back on the speculative in this book, perhaps as a consequence, and while that doesn’t diminish Cook’s legacy, neither does it put much flesh on the bones of what the hard-bop devotee already knows musically, nor what those with a more general interest in the lives of jazz musicians prior to the academic elevation of the music to a higher echelon of American culture knew applied as much to Cook as countless others.
As a black Floridian, Cook had a place in a racist society that was the same as that of his state fellows Fats Navarro, Cannonball and Nat Adderley, Sam Jones and Blue Mitchell, the last of whom served in the Silver quintet alongside Cook. Their legacies vary, of course, but “Junior Cook: quintessential NYC hard bop tenor” – the title of a 2023 JJ article introducing this book – sums up Cook’s persona as concisely as the title here. Perhaps this book will help raise his posthumous profile.
Have Horn, Will Travel. The Life Of Herman “Junior” Cook by Courtney M. Nero. University Of North Texas Press. ISBN-10: 157441982X
