Cook was an Augusta native who began drumming in his early teens, learning full albums by the likes of Brown, Al Green, Rufus Thomas, Wilson Pickett and Kool & the Gang, and playing in backing bands for touring artists such as Geater Davis and Z.Z.
The Godfather had heard that Cook and company were the best outfit in town, and on the strength of their performance that night, hired the crew as his opening act in December 1975.
In the early part of 1976, Brown began to retool the JBs and brought Cook aboard as his new drummer, a position the 18-year-old would hold off and on for the next thirty years.
He stayed with Brown for the next two years until receiving an offer from producer Frank Farian to bring his band Sky Train to Germany and back Jamaican-born vocalist Precious Wilson.
In June 2014 Tony Cook produced and recorded drums on a song "Robo-friend" by Russian alternative rock band 208 Talks of Angels.
We’d go to gigs and anybody might show up.” In 2010, Stones Throw Records released Cook’s Back to Reality anthology, a collection of rare and unreleased funk, boogie, and proto-rap from the immediate post-disco era.
[4] Stones Throw founder, Chris “Peanut Butter Wolf” Manak, first learned of Cook when he found the "On the Floor" single in a New York City record store in the early 2000s.