Richard Cook

Richard David Cook (1957–2007) was a British jazz writer, magazine editor, and former record company executive, best known for co-authoring The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings with Brian Morton, which ran for ten editions until 2010. He began writing about music in the late 1970s, contributing to NME, editing The Wire and Jazz Review, and serving as jazz critic for The Sunday Times. Cook also authored Richard Cook’s Jazz Encyclopedia, Blue Note: The Biography, and It’s About That Time, a survey of Miles Davis’ key recordings, before dying of cancer at age 50.