News from the darkest corners of the musical universe:

◦ Friday, September 14, 2007 ◦

Richard Cook, a veteran British music journalist and the author of several acclaimed books on jazz, died in London on August 25, 2007. He was 50.

The cause was bowel and liver cancer, said Brian Morton, who collaborated with Mr. Cook on his best-known book, "The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings."

That book, intended as a comprehensive survey of jazz albums in print, was first published in 1992 as "The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP and Cassette." It was extensively revised seven times under various titles, most recently last year.

Mr. Cook also wrote the critically praised jazz books "Blue Note Records: The Biography," "It's About That Time: Miles Davis On and Off Record" and "Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia," an idiosyncratic work whose title reflected the fact that it was one man's take on the subject rather than a definitive overview.

As a staff writer for the British weekly New Musical Express in the early 1980s, Mr. Cook wrote about a range of music in addition to jazz, a practice he continued as editor of The Wire, a magazine originally devoted to the jazz avant-garde. He broadened its focus to include not just other kinds of jazz but also rock, hip-hop and contemporary classical and electronic music.

He was the jazz catalog manager for PolyGram Records in Britain from 1992 to 1997 and later the editor of Jazz Review magazine. He also wrote for other publications and produced jazz documentaries for BBC Radio.