Saturday, April 27, 2013

Tommy McCook

Another from the prodigious Doctor Bird label from 1968.  Wonderfully jazzy ska instrumental with cover of Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World" on the other side.

Wikipedia says  - " McCook was born in Havana, Cuba, and moved to Jamaica in 1933. He took up the tenor saxophone at the age of eleven, when he was a pupil at the Alpha School, and eventually joined Eric Dean’s Orchestra.
In 1954 he left for an engagement in NassauBahamas, after which he ended up in MiamiFlorida, and it was here that McCook first heard John Coltrane and fell in love with jazz. McCook returned to Jamaica in early 1962, where he was approached by a few local producers to do some recordings. Eventually he consented to record a jazz session for Clement "Coxson" Dodd, which was issued on the album as "Jazz Jamaica". His first ska recording was an adaptation of Ernest Gold’s "Exodus", recorded in November 1963 with musicians who would soon make up the Skatalites.
During the 1960s and 1970s McCook recorded with the majority of prominent reggae artists of the era, working particularly with producer Bunny Lee and his house bandThe Aggrovators, as well as being featured prominently in the recordings of Yabby You and the Prophets (most notably on version sides and extended disco mixes), all while still performing and recording with the variety of line ups under the Skatalites name.

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