The story of “Nantucket Lullaby” began in the mid 1980s when I was working on my second album Soft Wave. Rick Krizman was producing and recording the project, I was the artist and co-producer. Rick was living near Rose and Lincoln in Venice California and had bought a Soundcraft mixer and Otari MX 5050 8-track recorder from the Sound Solutions recording studio on 4th street, near Wilshire in Santa Monica. The studio was originally owned by the group the Beach Boys. We wrote and recorded a dozen or so songs in that studio and looking back, those were magical times. The song was presented to Narada Productions to be on the Soft Wave album and for some reason, the song was not picked up for the album, which we always thought was a huge mistake.

Nantucket Lullaby was created from a melody I wrote, then Rick created a soundscape to go with my melody. In those days there wasn’t a lot of editing and the saxophone was generally recorded in one or two takes. The music we wrote together had a visual sense about it and we called it The Movie…

Coming from the greater Seattle Washington area I grew up in a land surrounded by trees and lots of water. I believe because of growing up in the northwest, I’ve always had a deep concern for the Mammals of the seas and oceans they live in. Rick was from the mid-west and had spent time on the east coast and while they experienced whales in their natural environment.

The album Soft Wave used the sound of ocean waves as interludes between each song and we personally recorded the waves at Trankus Beach near Malibu between 12 and 5am. The album featured a song written for the dolphins, called Talk to Me, and one called Nantucket Lullaby that was inspired by whales, (in this case Humpback whales) and their ocean environment. The vision of Nantucket Lullaby is me standing on the bow of a boat, not harpooning whales, but playing a song for them, and then in turn they sang back to me, inspiring me to play an enchanting melody for them, making it their own song.

Many whale families have been harvested to near extinction. Whales and dolphins are highly intelligent creatures so the thought of harming them or killing them, to me is a crime…
— Jessie Allen Cooper