Junior Cook Interview - October 1985

Herman “Junior” Cook – in his own words! 

This interview took place on 26 October 1985, during Junior Cook’s travel to Minnesota.  Broadcaster Leigh Kamman caught up with Cook for a phone interview before his gig.  Cook shares about early recording dates; his influences; playing gigs at Connie’s across from Small’s Paradise in NYC; rehearsing with Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, and Sonny Stitt; jamming with Horace Silver and Clifford Jordan in early 1958; his first trip to Europe in 1959; and teaching a new generation of student-musicians at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.

In an interview in support of the upcoming biography on Junior Cook, tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson and I talked about all the jazz greats who have passed. He summed up, “all we have now are the recordings.”  Anyone who was born after February 1992 had no opportunity to interact with Junior Cook personally, but what a treasure to find recordings like this one, where we can hear Cook in his own words, in his own voice, relaying insights about his life and music.

Check it out on YouTube, courtesy of the Leigh Kamman Legacy Project, here.