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Cook, Inspirations earn top honors
By Lynn Hotaling
It’s been a good year for Caney Fork’s Martin Cook and the gospel group he founded more than 40 years ago.
Cook, a former teacher and school board member, was named to the Piano Roll of Honor last month in Greenville, S.C. And The Inspirations, the quartet he organized in 1964, was voted Favorite Gospel Male Quartet at the Singing News Fan Awards in Louisville, Ky.
Cook was one of four inducted into the 2005 Class of the Southern Gospel Piano Roll of Honor during an Aug. 13 ceremony. Other inductees included Ellen Kennedy Marsh, Ben Speer and Eddie Crook.
Former Jackson County Board of Education member Martin Cook of Caney Fork, founder, manager and pianist for the popular Inspirations gospel group, was recently named to the Southern Gospel Piano Roll of Honor in Greenville, S.C. The Inspirations last month were chosen Favorite Male Gospel Group at The Singing News Fan Awards in Louisville, Ky.
Organized in 1996, the Southern Gospel Piano Roll of Honor is equivalent to a Southern Gospel pianists Hall of Fame. Inductees are selected by a committee that includes a cross-section of legendary pianists and other noted contributors to the gospel music profession. The Piano Roll of Honor currently has 36 members, including this year’s inductees.
Cook is one of the all-time longevity leaders among Southern Gospel pianists, and his piano-playing style is one of the most recognized and distinctive. He became the first pianist for the Kingsmen Quartet in 1957 and played piano for the Silvertones, a regional quartet from North Carolina, before forming The Inspirations while teaching high school chemistry in Bryson City. Cook has served as the group’s manager, pianist and emcee for the past 41 years.
“I’m deeply honored with induction into the Southern Gospel Piano Roll of Honor,” Cook said. “I’m as proud of this accomplishment as any I’ve ever had bestowed upon me. I praise God for giving me the ability to play a piano.”
His induction into the elite pianists’ group came as a surprise, though he’s worked on his sound for years while trying not to copy anyone else, he said.
“I play the same chord they’re singing and try to make it sound bigger,” he said. “I try to support the group with what I call ‘musical phrases.’”
Cook described those musical phrases as “good sounds of your own that no one else has done.”
According to Cook, all professional musicians “have to come up with something original and keep coming up with things.”
Cook was inducted into the Southern Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2003.
Last month’s Favorite Gospel Male Quartet award marks the first time The Inspirations have won that particular award, though the group has been voted Favorite Gospel Group six times (1972, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977 and 1978) by Singing News subscribers. During those years, all male and mixed groups vied for that honor. The award was separated into Favorite Male Quartet, Favorite Mixed Quartet and Favorite Gospel Trio in 1997.
“Words can not adequately express the appreciation we give to Singing News subscribers for the confidence they so graciously demonstrated,” said Cook. “We thank God for allowing us to take part in gospel music.”
With a career spanning more than 40 years, Cook’s gospel music portfolio is impressive. Led by his efforts, The Inspirations have developed the nation’s largest gospel singing festival, the “Singing in the Smokies,” which is held in three sessions each year at Inspirations Park on a mountainside near Bryson City.
A lifetime gospel singer, Cook helped create one of gospel music’s greatest success stories when he invited some of his high school students to his home to sing.
The Inspirations “just happened,” Cook said. Folks had always gathered at his dad’s house on Caney Fork to sing, and after he got married and moved to Bryson City to teach high school, people there did the same, he said.
“The boys in the original group – Archie Watkins, Ronnie Hutchins, Troy Burns and Jack Laws – were the ones who came most often and stayed. It was kind of a natural weeding out,” Cook said.
Raised playing piano and singing in church, music was part of life for Cook, who continued to teach school and work summer jobs with the National Park Service during the Inspirations’ early years.
“It didn’t occur to me that music could be a career,” he said.
It was while Cook was working as a ranger at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky that he found the right name for his quartet.
During a service at First Baptist Church in Brownsville, Ky., Cook listened to a preacher from Georgia hold forth on divine inspiration. Before the service was over, Cook had settled on the name “Inspirations” for his young group.
Cook received his early piano training at home and in church. The first time he played for a church service was because the regular pianist (his sister) moved away.
“When she left, it was up to me, and I played. I was the only choice they had,” he said.
When The Inspirations took the stage in 1966 in Atlanta at their first big gospel show, the bass singer was 14, the tenor and lead singers were 17, the baritone was 21 and Cook was 29. They brought down the house, according to Asheville Citizen-Times columnist (and Addie native) Bob Terrell, who chronicled the story of the Inspirations in his 1999 book “What a Wonderful Time,” titled after The Inspirations’ first big hit.
A 1970 segment on the popular television show “60 Minutes” also boosted the Inspirations’ meteoric rise, he said.
“That really helped us,” Cook said. “We were on CBS news for a solid 7 minutes. People saw it all over the country. (News crews) followed us for a week and condensed it down to 7 minutes. We were the sole subject, too. It wasn’t a show about gospel music – it was a show about the Inspirations.”
Cook and the “boys” were voted by fans and The Singing News as the favorite gospel group in America in 1972, just eight years after they started singing together. No other gospel group ever “scaled the heights” so quickly, wrote Terrell.
Their success was no accident, Cook said.
“We started spending whole nights working on one song. Maybe we sang once a month in church, but we sang every night at my house. The kind of singing we did was like working a difficult puzzle.
“With a quartet, you have to hit pitch, and you have to take it syllable by syllable so you all say it exactly the same way. And you’ve got to say it at the same time, if you’re going to have harmony.
“You have to work and work and work. You never get it done,” Cook said. “Not every group does that, but not every group has been successful for more than 40 years. In order to stay at the top of the demand list, you’ve got to keep producing.”
They have had dozens of songs, including five number one and six Songs of The Year, listed on national radio airplay charts.
The Inspirations’ song repertoire includes such classics as “Jesus Is Coming Soon,” “Touring That City,” “When I Wake Up To Sleep No More”, “A Wedding Invitation,” and “Thank You Lord,” as well as “I’ll Not Turn My Back On Him Now” and “We Need To Thank God,” chosen as the 2002 and 2003 National Gospel Song of The Year, respectively.
The Inspirations, who play about 130 dates each year and have logged more than 4 million miles on the road, will perform close to home later this month. The group will host their annual fall Singing in the Smokies on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 14 and 15. For more information, visit online at www.theinspirations.com.
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