Dane Cook Harmful if Swallowed

Continuing to go her own way on Gospel Plow, Elizabeth Cook is another artist who's too rock for country and too country for rock, although in the music business climate of 2012 she may be too country for country, too. As you might expect from the title of this mini-album, Gospel Plow is a record of sacred music, although it's marked by Cook's own inimitable mix of styles and features at least one track that will surprise almost any country fan, not matter how alt. The songs are mostly familiar, although the arrangements are anything but…

Harpsichordist Martha Cook here records Bach's Kunst der Fuge, BWV 1080 (The Art of the Fugue), with a specific interpretive framework in mind. The work, Cook believes, was devotional and intimate in intent; it is, she writes, a "musical prayer," and it embodies the parables and exhortation found in the biblical Book of Luke, 14:27-35. Interested readers are invited to consult the booklet for more details. Making the supposition work involves discarding the version of the work published after Bach's death by C.P.E. Bach and others, and it also involves some of the numerology that so often seems to crop up in connection with Bach's larger works. There's some justification in earlier German music for regarding Bach's instrumental music in this programmatic way; Bach would have known the Biblische Historien keyboard sonatas of 1700 by one of his key predecessors, Johann Kuhnau. But what's missing is any evidence of why Bach, by the end of his life a revered figure, might have wanted to embed secret messages in Die Kunst der Fuge. The unalloyed good news is that you can disregard the stated method of interpretation and listen to the performance in the abstract. It's very powerful.

Elizabeth Cook comes to country music naturally; her parents had a working honky tonk band and her first public performance was on-stage with them when she was just a tyke…

Through more than 100 appearances on The Grand Ole Opry, Elizabeth Cook built strong ties to the audience most likely to respond to her debut album. Her voice throughout Hey Y'all begs comparison to classic country divas such as Loretta Lynn and especially Dolly Parton, to whom Cook pays good-humored tribute on "Dolly." …

After a quick listen to Balls, it's hard to imagine why Warner Brothers dropped Elizabeth Cook after only one album. Could she have sounded too traditional for country radio? Did they want her to tone down her in-your-face delivery? The mysteries of major labels are many and unfathomable, so suffice it to say that Cook is a major talent and will undoubtedly wind up with another major-label deal. Balls has the same power and charm evident on her earlier outings and the bonus of Rodney Crowell's sharp production talents…

This first solo release from tenor sax player Junior Cook came at the midpoint of his six-year tenure with the Horace Silver Band. It's a relaxed affair, paced a couple of notches below the intensity of a typical Silver date. Still, with Cook's front-line partner in the Silver group - trumpeter Blue Mitchell - on board, along with Silver's rhythm section, the 1961 session has a definite affinity with the hard bop style of the more famous parent group. There are also links to the cool tones of Miles Davis' early-'50s Blue Note releases and to the transitional work of the mid-'50s Max Roach-Clifford Brown Band. If the overall approach is subdued, this generally works to the music's benefit by bringing out the finer points of Cook's and Mitchell's' playing…