| Birth Name: | Richard David Cook |
| Birth Date: | 7 February 1957 |
| Birth Place: | Kew, Surrey, England |
| Death Place: | London, England |
| Other Names: | R. D. Cook |
| Occupation: | Jazz writer, magazine editor |
| Notable Works: | Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia |
Richard David Cook (7 February 1957 - 25 August 2007) was a British jazz writer, magazine editor and former record company executive. Sometimes credited as R. D. Cook, Cook was born in Kew, Surrey,[1] and lived in west London as an adult. A writer on music from the late 1970s until he died, Cook was co-author, with Brian Morton, of The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings,[2] which lasted for ten editions until 2010. His other books included Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia, Blue Note Records: The Biographyand, and It's About That Time: Miles Davis On and Off the Record.[3]
Cook began as a staff writer for New Musical Express (NME) in the early 1980s. NMEs editor at the time, Neil Spencer, commented that he "would take on the pieces that the fashion-oriented shunned – a Roxy Music review, an audience with a fading star, a piece on the emergent sounds of Africa".[4] He was later the jazz critic for The Sunday Times and a music writer for the New Statesman. Cook was formerly editor of The Wire, when it was a jazz-centred periodical (it broadened its coverage towards the end of his editorship), and edited Jazz Review magazine from its foundation in 1998. Jazz Review continued for a time after his death, using Cook's approach to the music as continuing inspiration; it did not name a specific successor (Morton) for six months. Cook also presented a programme on jazz for BBC local radio GLR.
Cook was the UK jazz catalogue manager for PolyGram (1992–97) and also produced albums by the trumpeter Guy Barker.[5] During his spell at PolyGram, Cook launched the short-lived "Redial" re-issue line of classic British jazz albums. In 2002, he was responsible for issuing a 10-CD limited-edition set by the American avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor of 1990 recordings, 2 Ts for a Lovely T, on the Codanza label.
Cook died from bowel and liver cancer on 25 August 2007, aged 50, in London, a year after diagnosis.[6]