I was nearly 16 years old and heading out to
the old racetrack at Clearlake and Dirksen with my sister, her
boyfriend, and a few friends. Someone, probably Len Trumper, was
hosting an outdoor music concert with local groups and maybe a
regional headliner. I don’t remember too clearly all of those
events from back in the early ’70s, but I do remember that
the buzz was all about the band Sky King and Joe Cooke, the
group’s lead guitarist. After all those years, Cooke is still
playing music, and this weekend he returns to Springfield for a
hometown reunion. Right after high school, Cooke attended the
famed Berklee College of Music in Boston and lived across the
dormitory hall from a soon-to-be guitar god named Al DiMeola. His
local professional career began with Dean and the Sinisters,
playing Saturday nights at the Grandview Municipal Building in the
late ’60s. After a succession of local rock & roll bands
that included Hot Ice, Rold Gold, the Plains, and Sky High, he
landed the gig of a lifetime, playing guitar with blues-rocker
Jerry Doucette, whose eponymous band was the owner of the No. 1 hit
record “Mama Let Him Play.” In the mid-’80s,
Cooke moved to Nashville and hooked up with Greg Guidry, the St.
Louis-born artist behind “Goin’ Down,” a No. 8
smash on the Top 40 charts. “In the early ’90s, I took a
break from music for a few years,” says Cooke, “but, in
2002, decided I couldn’t shake the music bug and got another
band going.” That would be the Joe Cooke Band, which, in
addition to Cooke, comprises Springfield drummer Dan Shaughnessy, Terry
Fox on keyboards, and Brad Crowder on bass. Various local musicians,
including bassist John Sauter and percussionist Bill Bacon, plan to sit
in with Cooke during the weekend shows. “Our song list is a wide variety of
blues and older ’60s-style rock, plus many originals,”
says Cooke. “ I suppose the most important thing I can tell
you is that now I am playing from an emotional standpoint. . . . I
guess that’s why the blues.”
The Joe Cooke Band plays 9 p.m.-1 a.m.
Friday, May 5, at the Forty-Niner Bye-Bye (518 Bruns Lane,
217-787-4937) and 8:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m. Saturday, May 6, at
Knuckleheads (2000 Peoria Rd., 217-789-1488).
This article appears in May 4-10, 2006.
