UNT Press

About Nero's Have Horn, Will Travel

Have Horn, Will Travel is the first full-length biography of tenor saxophone virtuoso and in-demand sideman Herman “Junior” Cook, chronicling his life and impact from his Pensacola, Florida, origins to his New York City–based career. Best known for his association with pianist Horace Silver’s iconic quintet from 1958 to 1964, Cook continued as a mainstay in some of jazz’s hardest-driving ensembles—with trumpeters Blue Mitchell, Freddie Hubbard, and Bill Hardman; drummers Louis Hayes and Elvin Jones; and the McCoy Tyner Big Band, among others—through the decades until his death in 1992.

Highlights of Cook’s life and career are retold from meticulous research and interviews with friends and musicians who knew and played with him, including Mosaic Records founder Michael Cuscuna, SteepleChase Records founder Nils Winther, and Cook’s right-hand bandmate and roommate, vocalist Timmy Shepherd. The book also relays some of Cook’s “lessons”—best practices of musicianship that young jazz fellow travelers learned from his example as a master musician in the 1980s New York City jam session scene. Those lessons embody the sense of deep community and the apprenticeship tradition of twentieth-century jazz—a tradition that some musicians perceive is now lacking.

Have Horn, Will Travel offers the reader a window into the life of arguably one of jazz’s great underrated practitioners, laying bare the triumph and tragedy of a musician whose career largely missed the spotlight and the marquee. While the name of Junior Cook is unknown to many who have heard his signature tenor on several of Horace Silver’s heralded compositions—including “Sister Sadie,” “Blowin the Blues Away,” and “Cookin at the Continental”—he was the inspiration of many of his contemporaries and marshaled a generation of young musicians into the jazz idiom while living a sideman’s life.