Mike Cooper


 * Mike Cooper was born in Reading, England in 1942. He began playing guitar at the age of 16. Initially inspired by New Orleans and Dixieland jazz, he played in skiffle groups during the late '50s. His life changed drastically in 1961 when he saw Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee at Reading's town hall and later witnessed James Cotton playing with Chris Barber at a local music festival. Naturally, he began to play harmonica as well as guitar.

Cooper co-founded the band the Blues Committee, an R&B group based on the heady example set by Alexis Korner. Simultaneously, he was playing folk-blues as a solo artist in folk clubs... Cooper began opening for a host of traveling American bluesmen as well as British stars of the era. He met fellow folk-blues musician Ian A. Anderson in 1967. Between them, the pair recorded three four-track EPs for the Saydisc label. They released a full album of these tracks as well as new pieces entitled The Inverted World. Though assembled in early 1968, it wasn't released until 1970. His playing had developed exponentially, incorporating a wide variety of Delta and country styles in his technique. (Read more here)

Links to Peel
Mike Cooper recorded his first session for the Night Ride of 07 August 1968 and went on to do eight sessions for Peel between 1968 and 1975. His early sessions can be seen as a part of the British country blues revival, which Peel encouraged by booking many of the artists involved for Night Ride and playing tracks from their records (see Ken Garner, The Peel Sessions, pp.50-51). The later sessions contain more self-penned material and reflect Mike Cooper's musical development towards a more exploratory style, incorporating elements of contemporary jazz; his backing musicians included well-known names from the British jazz scene (Harry Miller, Mike Osborne, Louis Moholo).

Mike Cooper was never commercially successful or fashionable with critics, but he was able to sustain a career long after he had ceased to record Peel sessions. Reissues of his records won the approval of Peel's son Tom Ravenscroft, who played a couple of Cooper tracks when sitting in for Gideon Coe on BBC 6 Music on 18 August 2016 and described "The Singing Tree", from the 1972 album The Machine Gun Company With Mike Cooper, as an "amazing track".

Sessions

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Other Shows Played
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 * DD Month YYYY: Song (single/album) Label