Lainie Cooke
made her first record—when she was 3. Her next recording—a 12-tune jazz CD
titled Here’s to Life!—was recorded when she was 60! And now, at age 73, Cooke
is releasing her third CD, The Music Is the Magic, a masterpiece of jazz vocal
art produced by drummer and trumpeter Ralph Peterson and issued on his Onyx
Productions label.
Cooke never
stopped singing during that 57-year gap, however. She made her radio debut at 6
in her native Minneapolis, first appeared on television at 11, and sang with
local dance bands during her high school days. After studying theater for two
years at the University of Minnesota, she moved to New York City when she was
20 and soon began a hugely successful career as voice-over artist for
commercials, documentaries and motion pictures that kept her busy for four
decades.
Cooke has
been a resident of New York City since she was 20, save for relatively brief
periods in Jamaica and California. “I went to New York to find out what I could
actually do with all of the stuff that was inside me,” she reflects. “I wasn’t
sure what I wanted to be—a musical theater performer or a nightclub
singer.” After working an office job for
a period, she got fingerprinted for a cabaret card and played a few New York
clubs, but upon doing her first out-of-town gig in Hartford, Connecticut, she
developed an instant distaste for being on the road. Voice-over work, which
allowed her to stay home in New York City, became her calling and kept her
steadily employed for most of the next 40 years.
“I had a day
job where I used my voice every day,” says Cooke, who wound up serving on the
board of directors of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists
(AFTRA), eventually as the union’s National Recording Secretary. In 1973, Cooke
began a three-and-a-half year adventure she calls “the very best and very worst
times of my life” by joining her then-husband in running a 38-acre chicken farm
in Jamaica that sold poultry and vegetables to hotels in nearby Montego Bay.
She got to sing jazz once a month at a hotel there, but political turmoil on
the island eventually caused the tourist industry to dry up, thus ending the
couple’s business.
After
getting a divorce, Cooke moved to Los Angeles in 1979 and began singing in
clubs with such top jazz men as pianist Dick Shreve and bassist Bob Maize but
moved back to New York in 1983 and resumed doing voice-overs. She returned
briefly to L.A. to record half of her first CD, 2002’s Here’s to Life! on the
Harlemwood label, with Shreve, Maize, and others. New York musicians, including
Firth, bassist Cameron Brown, and drummer Matt Wilson, completed the album. Her
second CD, 2008’s It’s Always You, also on Harlemwood, also featured Firth,
Brown, and Wilson, as well as saxophonist Joel Frahm.
Lainie Cooke
may have gotten off to a late start as a recording artist, but she has more
than made up for lost time. With The Music Is the Magic, she again surrounds
herself with some of the jazz world’s finest instrumentalists and further
affirms her standing in the front ranks of jazz singers performing today. She’s
got it all down—taste, technique, tone, and timing, a truly magical
combination.
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