Will Marion Cook

1869 - 1944

About

Will Marion Cook (1869 -1944) is one of the most important figures in pre-jazz African-American music. Cook was born to middle class parents in Washington, D.C. His father, John Hartwell Cook, was in the first class of students at Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C. He went on to become the school's first dean. Following his father's sudden death in 1879, Cook and his mother lived in several cities around the country. In 1881 he was sent to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to live with his grandfather where he heard black folk music for the first time. However, Cook's early career remained focused on classical music and violin performance, which he began at age 13. When he was 15, Cook studied violin at Oberlin College. With the help of Frederick Douglas’s fundraising, Cook studied from 1887-89 at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik with Joseph Joachim, the famous violinist and associate of Brahms. Upon returning to the U.S., he began to teach music privately; among his students was Clarence Cameron White, who later became famous as a violinist and composer. Cook's earliest composition was Scenes from the Opera of Uncle Tom's Cabin--intended for the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, but which was not performed. In 1894-95, he continued his studies at the National Conservatory for Music where Antonin Dvořák and John White were teaching. Because his classical career was not successful, Cook turned to popular music. He began writing music for the Gotham-Attucks Publishing Company with R. C. McPherson. His first big success was the musical Clorindy, or The Origin of the Cakewalk (1898). Cook remained an important figure in the new century. He wrote and published many songs, was prominent as a conductor, and was the musical director for Bert Williams and George Walker's string of groundbreaking musicals, including The Sons of Ham (1900), In Dahomey (1903) (the first musical composed and performed entirely by African-Americans in a major Broadway theater), Abyssinia (1906), and Bandana Land (1908). Cook also wrote music for The Southerners (1904), the first Broadway show to feature a racially integrated cast. He worked with Ernest Hogan on a musical Jes Lak White Fo'ks (1899) and with Hogan's Memphis Students performance troupe, with whom he toured Europe in 1905. Outside the theater world, Cook also gained a solid reputation as a choral and orchestral conductor. In 1910 he became a contributing member of New York's Clef Club, an organization of African-American musicians led by James Reese Europe. He served as chorus master and as assistant conductor of the Clef Club Orchestra. In 1918, he founded the New York Syncopated Orchestra, later renamed the Southern Syncopated Orchestra. The instrumental ensemble, which included a twenty-voice choir, performed on tour throughout the United States and Europe until 1920. As mentor and teacher, Cook influenced a generation of young African-American musicians, including jazz composer and performer Duke Ellington and singer Eva Jessye, the first black woman to become a professional choral conductor.

Related Information

http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200038839/default.html

Works by Will Marion Cook