Have Horn, Will Travel is the first full-length biography of tenor saxophone virtuoso and in-demand sideman Herman "Junior" Cook, chronicling his life and impact from his Pensacola, Florida, origins to his New York City-based career. Best known for his association with pianist Horace Silver's iconic quintet from 1958 to 1964, Cook continued as a mainstay in some of jazz's hardest-driving ensembles-with trumpeters Blue Mitchell, Freddie Hubbard, and Bill Hardman; drummers Louis Hayes and Elvin Jones; and the McCoy Tyner Big Band, among others-through the decades until his death in 1992. Highlights of Cook's life and career are retold from meticulous research and interviews with friends and musicians who knew and played with him, including Mosaic Records founder Michael Cuscuna, SteepleChase Records founder Nils Winther, and Cook's right-hand bandmate and roommate, vocalist Timmy Shepherd. The book also relays some of Cook's "lessons"-best practices of musicianship that young jazz fellow travelers learned from his example as a master musician in the 1980s New York City jam session scene. Those lessons embody the sense of deep community and the apprenticeship tradition of twentieth-century jazz-a tradition that some musicians perceive is now lacking. Have Horn, Will Travel offers the reader a window into the life of arguably one of jazz's great underrated practitioners, laying bare the triumph and tragedy of a musician whose career largely missed the spotlight and the marquee. While the name of Junior Cook is unknown to many who have heard his signature tenor on several of Horace Silver's heralded compositions-including "Sister Sadie," "Blowin the Blues Away," and "Cookin' at the Continental"-he was the inspiration of many of his contemporaries and marshaled a generation of young musicians into the jazz idiom while living a sideman's life.
Courtney M. Nero is a saxophonist, born and raised in Washington, DC, and a lover of jazz biographies. His debut solo album, Make Me Walk, was nominated for a Stellar Award in 2009. He earned a BS in Russian language from Georgetown University and an MA in International Affairs from American University. This is his first book. He lives in northern Virginia.
"The individualized, great-man theory is of limited use for understanding jazz on its own terms, yet it has long guided the way books about jazz are chosen for publication. But things have changed. Figures like Junior Cook-'sidemen,' if you like-have been overlooked outside of musician and gig-goer circles. To take up these subjects is to meet jazz where it lives, unearthing valuable information not only about the lives of the musicians themselves but also about the stories of their milieu, including the tiny clubs they played in, their daily practices, who they listened to, how they shared knowledge, what they earned, what they read, what they thought. Nero's book is evenhanded, generous, well-written, well-researched, and careful about facts. It is designed to be read by anyone interested in the subject, not just by musicians or specialists." - Ben Ratliff, former pop and jazz critic at The New York Times; clinical associate professor at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study; and author of five books, including Coltrane: The Story of a Sound "The unique and triumphant virtue of this biographical reminiscence resides with its candid directness and sensitive understanding of both the jazz 'world' and a truly stalwart, somewhat private, musician who dedicated himself to the business of making creative music undistracted by fame, glamor, and self-adulation. I'm stunned to realize in retrospect how sad and genuinely unfair the whole of the jazz legacy would have been without this book. It rescues the truth and value of a significant jazz musician, unheralded to an unfortunate degree, whose legacy will endure as long as the grand jazz heritage lives. This text earns my deep respect." - Jim Merod, jazz and blues recording and mastering engineer and coauthor of Whisper Not:The Autobiography of Benny Golson
