Mike Cooper, born 24 August 1942 in Reading, Berkshire, is a British singer‑guitarist who began playing at 16, joining skiffle groups and later jazz clubs. He broke through with the 1969 Pye album Oh Really!?, an acoustic blues record largely written by Cooper and featuring covers of Blind Boy Fuller and Son House. In the early 1970s Cooper issued Do I Know You? (1970), Trout Steel (1970), Places I Know (1971) and Life & Death in Paradise (1974). The 1990s marked the founding of his Hipshot label, yielding ambient, electronic‑exotica releases such as Island Songs (1996) and White Shadows in the South Seas (2013). Later albums include New Globe Notes (2014), Raft (2017), Tropical Gothic (2018), and Eternal Equinox (2025). Cooper has toured Europe, appeared on BBC Radio 2 and Italian Rai Uno, composed scores for silent films, and authored essays on Polynesian slack‑key guitar.
