Cook and Marc Breitfelder
New Music Distribution

If the blues is a big family, Jack Cook is the favorite uncle. He knows everyone. He has visited and played music with all of them - not just old masters like Sleepy John Estes, Big Joe Williams, Bukka White, Gus Cannon, Furry Lewis, Houston Stackhouse, Joe Willie Wilkins, and Yank Rachell, but also current blues makers like Dave Prez, Morgen Spiess, John Marshall, Ramblin' Roberts, and Marc Breitfelder.

If the blues is a big library of music, Jack Cook is the chief librarian. He knows who wrote the songs, who recorded the definitive versions, the name of the record label, the flip side, the personnel, the instrumentation, the recording engineer, the type of microphone used, when the recording was reissued on LP and on CD, and he can probably quickly locate the recording in his meticulously maintained personal collection of blues 78's, LP's, compact discs, and cassettes. Not only that, but Jack can also demonstrate the song as it was recorded, and then play his own version, maintaining the groove of the song, but taking it in an original and meaningful new direction.

If the blues is an all-star band, Jack Cook is the guitar player. If you have ever heard Jack Cook play the guitar live, you know what I'm talking about. The music he delivers through his National or his Gibson ES-125 guitar explains traditional blues in ways that go far beyond even Jack's encyclopedic knowledge of the genre. Jack plays country blues with a combination of unassailable technical skill and ferociously authentic soul. His playing will shatter every doubt you ever had about country blues, about a blues man born and raised in Seattle's north end, about the continued vitality of traditional blues as an art form, and about the existence of wonder and meaning in our dark and chaotic universe.

Jack teams up with German harmonica virtuoso Marc Breitfelder for "Feed My Body to the Fishes But My Soul to the Lord Above." The CD is the United States release of an album Jack and Marc recorded in Germany last year. Marc is one of Europe's finest harmonica players. His masterful Howard Levy style harp playing has garnered him awards at numerous European and international festivals, including the Hohner World Harmonica Contest. In addition to Jack, Marc has played with Abi Wallenstein, Georg Schroeter, Professor Washboard, and a plethora of other talented European and American blues musicians.

Jack's tasty blues picking and soulful vocals blend surprisingly well with the musically flawless European blues and jazz sensibility of Breitfelder's harmonica playing. Breitfelder and Cook offer their own astute arrangements of some of the greatest traditional blues tunes, including Sleepy John Estes's hard driving "Goin to Brownsville," Freddy Cole's swinging "Mama Didn't Raise no Crazy Kids," Papa Charlie Jackson's "Shake that Thing," Silas Hogan's "Let me Be Your Hatchet," Speckled Red's lively ragtime "Right String but the Wrong Yo Yo," Ishman Bracev's "Saturday Blues," and Big Boy Spires "About to Lose My Mind." They also play several of their own musical compositions, and a great rendition of Pacific Northwest reed player/songwriter Johnnie Ward's "Supermarket Prices." For two of the tracks, the band sits out and Jack accompanies himself on the dobro. Jack's solo tracks are the title track, "Feed my Body to the Fishes," an old time blues melody by Willie Love, and "Coal Man," a haunting old song by Peg Leg Howell. These two tracks alone are worth far more than the price of the compact disc.

"Feed My Body to the Fishes" can be bought from Jack at one his frequent Seattle area gigs with the Phantoms of Soul and various other bands. You'll also find Jack at the Wednesday night "Blues of the Past" jam he co-hosts at the Bit Saloon (17th and Leary in Ballard) with Ramblin' Roberts and Guy Quintino. You can e-mail Jack at phantomofsoul@wowmail.com or visit his website at www.phantomsofsoul.com.

John Widel

Presse

Info

Jack Cook (guitar and vocals) stammt aus Seattle. Auf seinen langen Tourneen durch die USA traf er Blueslegenden wie Bukka White, Gus Cannon und Sleepy John Estes, spielte zusammen mit Bluesgrößen wie den Aces (Louis & Dave Myers & Fred Below) oder mit George Smith & Smokey Wilson oder trat solo auf Bluesfestivals auf (Jazz&Heritage Festival in 1979, Folklife, Winthrop, Portland Riverfront & Bumbershoot. 1998 trafen Jack und Marc zusammen und spielten mit Professor Washboard und Lars Vegas mehrere Monate in Norddeutschland zusammen. Ihre Zusammenarbeit dokumentierten sie mit der CD "Feed my body to the fishes..."

website www.phantomsofsoul.com