James Kok Jazz Virtuosen – Harlem, Instrumental Fox-trot (P. Riffa), Grammophon 1935 (Germany)

NOTE: Arthur James KOK (b. 1902, Czernowitz, Romania - 1976, Berlin) – He was a Romanian clarinet, alto saxophone & violin player and arranger. Kok learned to play music from his father, a violinist. He attended the Prague Conservatory and moved to Berlin in 1923 to avoid military service in his homeland. In 1920s Kok founded his first own band in Berlin, which remained active through 1933, toured throughout germanophone Europe, and recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. His orchestra was almost continuously engaged at the elegant Moka Efti casino in Berlin. In May 1935, the 3rd Reich Chamber of Music withdrew his work permit due to “ambiguities in Kok’s Aryan proof". He left Germany in 1935 and his orchestra, now without Kok, elected Erhard Bauschke as the new leader. For the 1935 summer season, the new orchestra was announced in Berlin as "purely Aryan line-up". James Kok arranged a new ensemble in Romania, which toured Switzerland in 1938 and Holland in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war. In 1939 he relocated to Geneva, where during the 2nd WW he assembled another dance band from emigrants. When the musicians returned to their home countries at the end of the war, Kok had to disband his orchestra for good and he traveled to USA to stay with his relatives. In 1969, James Kok moved back to Berlin where he stayed until his death in 1976.
Classically trained, he was not an outstanding soloist. Nevertheless, he is considered one of the best representatives of the hot style in Berlin in the 1930s; his orchestra, for which he wrote his own arrangements, was oriented towards the models of Jimmy Lunceford and Casa Loma Orchestra.

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