Biography
Born in the middle of the 1940s, Don Cooper spent his childhood shuttling between towns as his father’s job kept relocating the household. During elementary school he picked up the ukulele, then gravitated toward country music in his teens. While attending high school in the early 1960s he performed with several local groups whose sets leaned heavily on country-inflected versions of songs by James Brown, Buddy Holly, and the Beach Boys.
The 1963 release The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan proved pivotal; after absorbing that album Cooper began weaving Dylan material into his own coffeehouse sets. By the close of the decade three labels expressed interest, and he signed with Roulette Records, a company whose catalog had long featured jazz figures such as Count Basie alongside pop-rock acts like Tommy James & the Shondells and whose founder, Morris Levy, maintained a notorious reputation. Weeks after the contract was executed, his self-titled debut appeared in early 1970. Across that album and the three Roulette LPs that followed, all of which he produced, Cooper displayed both a rich, commanding voice and considerable songwriting skill.
Those recordings earned him opening slots with Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago at prestigious venues that included Carnegie Hall, allowing him to reach sizable audiences. Record sales, however, remained modest, and Roulette invested little in promotion. The label’s traditional strengths—securing airplay for hit singles through Morris Levy’s industry connections—did not align with Cooper’s folk-oriented work, which was ill-suited to jukeboxes or the singles market that had propelled Tommy James’s “Mony Mony.” On a different imprint he might have found a more receptive audience, yet Roulette was no better a fit for him than it would have been for Leonard Cohen or Livingston Taylor.
Recognizing the mismatch, both artist and label ended the arrangement in the mid-1970s, well short of the ten albums Cooper’s contract required. The four Roulette titles quickly disappeared into cut-out bins. Cooper eventually stepped away from the touring circuit and turned instead to recording children’s music, an endeavor that reached listeners in the 1990s through Random House. In 2005 Delay Records, under license from EMI, issued the fifteen-track compilation Howlin’ at the Moon, which showcases both his vocal prowess and the enduring quality of the original productions.
The 1963 release The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan proved pivotal; after absorbing that album Cooper began weaving Dylan material into his own coffeehouse sets. By the close of the decade three labels expressed interest, and he signed with Roulette Records, a company whose catalog had long featured jazz figures such as Count Basie alongside pop-rock acts like Tommy James & the Shondells and whose founder, Morris Levy, maintained a notorious reputation. Weeks after the contract was executed, his self-titled debut appeared in early 1970. Across that album and the three Roulette LPs that followed, all of which he produced, Cooper displayed both a rich, commanding voice and considerable songwriting skill.
Those recordings earned him opening slots with Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago at prestigious venues that included Carnegie Hall, allowing him to reach sizable audiences. Record sales, however, remained modest, and Roulette invested little in promotion. The label’s traditional strengths—securing airplay for hit singles through Morris Levy’s industry connections—did not align with Cooper’s folk-oriented work, which was ill-suited to jukeboxes or the singles market that had propelled Tommy James’s “Mony Mony.” On a different imprint he might have found a more receptive audience, yet Roulette was no better a fit for him than it would have been for Leonard Cohen or Livingston Taylor.
Recognizing the mismatch, both artist and label ended the arrangement in the mid-1970s, well short of the ten albums Cooper’s contract required. The four Roulette titles quickly disappeared into cut-out bins. Cooper eventually stepped away from the touring circuit and turned instead to recording children’s music, an endeavor that reached listeners in the 1990s through Random House. In 2005 Delay Records, under license from EMI, issued the fifteen-track compilation Howlin’ at the Moon, which showcases both his vocal prowess and the enduring quality of the original productions.
Albums
