Alabama’s Jeff Cook Dies at 73
After a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, Jeff Cook, a co-founding member of the Country Music Hall of Fame band Alabama, died Monday (11/7).
The Tennessean reports that Cook battled Parkinson’s disease, a progressive disorder of the nervous system that affects movement and causes tremors. He publicly disclosed his diagnosis in 2017.
A band representative confirmed his death Tuesday (11/8) afternoon. Cook died at his beachside home in Destin, Florida.
As a guitarist, fiddle player, and vocalist in Alabama, Cook, alongside cousins Randy Owen and Teddy Gentry, scored several country hits, starting in the late 1970s. They became superstars in the 1980s. Some of their biggest hits included “Mountain Music,” “Tennessee River,” and “My Home’s In Alabama.”
The Country Music Hall of Fame said of the band, “Between 1980 and 1993, Alabama took more than thirty records to the top of the Billboard country chart and sold millions of albums, substantially broadening country music’s audience and making themselves one of American music’s most popular acts of all time.”
Alabama was inducted into the CMHOF in 2005.
Alabama returned to touring in earnest with a 40th-anniversary celebration in 2013. Four years later, Cook scaled back performances with the band due to the ongoing impact of his Parkinson’s diagnosis. He stopped touring with Alabama around 2018.
Cook is survived by Lisa Cook, his wife of 27 years. In lieu of flowers, his family asks for donations to the Jeff and Lisa Cook Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness for Parkinson’s disease.
A celebration of life plan to be announced at a later date.
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