Will Marion Cook was an American composer and violinist born in Washington, D.C. He studied violin at the Oberlin Conservatory for two years after which, with the assistance the African American community, he studied under Heinrich Jacobson at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, Germany from 1887 to 1889. Finally, Cook studied with Antonín Dvorák and John White at the National Conservatory of Music between 1894 and 1895. His career as a concert violinist was brief and he became director of a chamber orchestra touring the east coast in 1890. In 1893 he adapted scenes from the Opera of Uncle Tom's Cabin for performance at the Chicago World's Fair which however were cancelled. His next major work was Clorindy; or, The Origin of the Cakewalk (1898), a musical comedy written in collaboration with Paul Laurence Dunbar. Cook was then appointed principal composer and musical director for the George Walker-Bert Williams Company producing many successful musicals.
Today he is best known for his songs which used folk elements in an original and distinct manner. These songs were mostly first performed in his musicals and some were published in A Collection of Negro Songs (1912).Towards the end of his career, Cook was a choir and orchestral conductor giving concerts both in New York and in Washington, D.C. He founded the The New York Syncopated Orchestra which toured the United States in 1918 and then went to England in 1919 for a command performance for King George V. He died in New York