Biography

“I’m never going to work. I’m going to let this guitar do it for me.” The words of a teenage Jack Cooke to his sister say it all. In the end it wasn’t his guitar, but his bass that has done all the work for him in his 36-year tenure with Ralph Stanley as a Clinch Mountain Boy. Starting with the Stanley Brothers in the mid 50’s, Jack halted his musical collaborations with the group in order to sing the lead vocals for Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys for four and a half years (1956-1960) before ending up with the Clinch Mountain Boys for good in 1970. After performing music for 40 years without his own album, producer Jim Lauderdale approached Cooke with the idea of creating a historical retrospective of one of bluegrass music’s veteran sidemen. The result is an uplifting collection of old time favorites and Lauderdale’s original, That’s How the Cookie Crumbles. The two Bonus Tracks on the CD were recorded in 1963 for Ark Records, an Ohio based record label specializing in country, bluegrass, and rockabilly, by Jack Cooke and The Virginia Mountain boys.