Biography
Tony Cook is a dance, disco and funk artist, who started as a drummer in the highly influential J.B.'s (James Brown's backing band). Brown first discovered Tony Cook in 1973, playing at a block party for the WRDW-AM radio station he owned in his childhood hometown of Augusta, Georgia. Cook was still in high school at the time, but stayed on stayed in Brown’s sights til the early part of 1976, when Brown began to retool the J.B.s and brought Cook aboard as his new drummer. Cook would hold this position off and on for the next thirty years until Brown’s death on Christmas Day in 2006.
As work with the J.B.s slowed in the disco era, Cook moved to London and went independent, scoring a deal in 1981 with Osceola Records and producing the first Tony Cook and the Party People singles. The next year, he began working with the Halfmoon label, releasing the seminal “On the Floor” and “On the Floor (Rock-It)” mixes by WBLS-FM DJs Timmy Regisford and Boyd Jarvis.
In 1984, Tony build his first recording studio, “The Hut.” This enriched the music scene in Augusta as well as the entire world of funk. Tony’s Funk Factory launched one great production after another into the charts. This was also the place, which spawned Tony Cook & The Party People, The GA’s, as well as the Jungle Band and many more.
Tony’s market was predominantly in Europe, the United States, Great Britain, and Australia. 1992 was the year that Tony’s music reached the Dutch and German dance floor after a group of dedicated DJ’s re-mixed his tracks, “Trunk-o-Funk," “Cooking” and “The Cook Monster,” which remain familiar to the ears, and legs, of many clubbing fans.
Tony has also performed live and in the studio with such artist as Latimore, Z.Z Hill, Billy Ocean, Robert Palmer, Little Milton, and many others.
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