Contact: Bob Cooke

Bob started singing “professionally” at age four. His family lived in LA and he found out that he could get cookies from the neighborhood ladies if he sang them a song. His repertoire at the time was severely limited so he combined “Que Sera” and “You Ain’t Nothin’ But A Hound Dog” for his first smash medley. It got to the point where his mother asked the ladies to send the cookies home in a bag so he wouldn’t spoil his dinner.

He got his first guitar from his Grandparents at the age of fourteen. He spent a couple of days honing his style and then started a band; “The Hallucinations”. They played a couple of gigs for the local hops at the community center and then disbanded. ("Artistic differences, I think," says Bob.)

His major influences were the bands of the time . . . The Beatles, The Byrds, Country Joe & the Fish, Cream, CSN&Y, Zappa, The Doors and the list can go on, and the “folkies” like Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, The Kingston Trio, Donovan, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Harry Chapin and Woody Guthrie.

He started playing “professionally” in 1971. Bob says, "I played New Jersey’s Warren County Fair that summer and I think I got paid a turkey drumstick. I was grossly over paid."

He ended up in Iowa where he was in an acoustic duo called Silverwood. They opened for The Ace Trucking Company, Chubby Checker and Alex Harvey. They also opened the season for The Maintenance Shop, a televised, weekly show from the campus of Iowa State University.

Bob moved to Colorado in 1983 and played rhythm guitar and sang in The Silver Sage Band. In 1990, the SSB morphed into Wichita River. The band was lucky enough to open for Ricky Scaggs, Susy Bogguss, Confederate Railroad, Don Williams, John Connoly, and Vern Gosdin. They disbanded in 1998 when Bob's best friend, R.D. Mount, the bass player, died.

Midlife Chrysler was a classic rock band with an acoustic soul. Bob again handled rhythm guitar and lead/harmony vocals. They played all over the Denver metro area in clubs and other live venues in 2002 & 2003.

Bob brings a lot of humor to his performances and never fails to entertain.

He frequently performs with with Kenny B. and Derek Sanchez, and with Smokin' Joe Poffel. In addition, he recently joined the band, Horsehead, with Brad Loving and Gary Roath.

	(photos by Kim Davison)
with Terry Dalton and Sandy Reay at Celtic Isles Public House
with Jeff Graves, Sandy Reay, the enthusiastic percussionist (photo by Sandy Culter)