Cook Records

Cook Records was a record label founded by Emory Cook (1913–2002), an audio engineer and inventor. From 1952 to 1966, Cook used his Sounds of our Times and Cook Laboratories record labels to demonstrate his philosophy about sound, recording equipment, and manufacturing techniques.

In addition to Sounds of Our Times, Cook released Road Recordings, a "White Label" series, test and binaural recordings.

Cook is sometimes said to have intended only to show the quality of his recording and molding process at an audio fair, with the added feature of binaural (i.e., stereophonic) sound to get attention. The overwhelming response led him to produce and sell his equipment and to produce records.

His micro-fusion process of pressing records required each mold be filled individually by people in a production line. The mold was then passed to someone at a record press. Cook thought it would be better for record stores to press records themselves, as they were requested by customers, rather than pay shipping and stocking fees. By 1958 there were record stores on Caribbean islands from Puerto Rico to Trinidad that had a Cook record-press in the back. Some stores began recording music. They shipped the master tape recording of an album to Cook, who made a metal mold of it and then returned it to the store. When a copy of a record was requested, the mold was filled with powdered vinyl and then placed a high-pressure press.

The 140-plus albums on Cook Records include European and American concert music, U.S. and Caribbean popular and traditional music, calliope and carrousel music, as well as mechanical and natural sounds. Over a quarter of these albums contained music from the Caribbean, many featuring calypso or steel bands. Many recordings were made in the field rather than by bringing musicians to a studio, with Cook traveling around Trinidad in particular, recording music wherever he heard it.

Cook Records may be best known because, in 1952, they were first to produce commercial stereo records, which Emory Cook called "binaural". About 50 "binaural" recordings were released in all. (The term "binaural sound" should not be confused with the modern term of that name which describes 'inner-ear-microphone' recordings.) Cook's sound was achieved by putting the output from two separate microphones on two independent monaural tracks on the same side of a record. On these records, the grooves of the first channel formed a single "band" that was concentric with and surrounded a second band that started about halfway into the record and which contained the grooves of the second stereo channel. The V-groove or Westrex stereo LP and cartridge that would become standard, which could play each wall of the groove as a separate track, were not released until 1957. After 1957, Cook also released V-groove stereo recordings as "Cook Vector Stereo". In the intervening years, Cook Labs, Livingston, Audiosphere, and Atlantic all released the two-track binaural disks.

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