Jeff Cook, born in Fort Payne, Alabama, on 27 August 1949, co-founded country band Alabama with his cousins Randy Owen and Teddy Gentry. The guitarist and multi-instrumentalist helped build the group into country music’s best-selling band, with a run of chart success that reshaped the genre’s commercial reach.

After early years performing as Young Country and Wildcountry, the band became Alabama and signed with RCA in 1980. It went on to score 33 country chart-toppers, including 27 consecutive non-holiday No. 1 singles, sell more than 75 million albums worldwide and receive the RIAA’s Country Group of the Century title in 1999. Cook reduced his appearances after revealing a Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2017, retired from live performance in 2018 and died from complications of the disease in 2022, aged 73.