Tina Brooks - True Blue
Released - October 1960
Recording and Session Information
Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, June 25, 1960
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Tina Brooks, tenor sax; Duke Jordan, piano; Sam Jones, bass; Art Taylor, drums.
tk.5 Miss Hazel
tk.7 Good Old Soul
tk.8 Nothing Ever Changes My Love For You
tk.14 True Blue
tk.18 Up Tight's Greek
tk.22 Theme For Doris
Track Listing
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Liner Notes
THE big bands as we knew them are dead. Whether they will ever come back is doubtful. The point is that a valuable working area for jazz apprentices has been desolated. Where then are the young players coming from? They are coming from the towns and cities as before and an increasing number are being turned out by collegiate circles. But where are they getting the practical experience of playing that is necessary to sustain them in the demanding milieu of the small group? For many young Negro musicians the answer to that question has been the rhythm and blues band. In this answer also lies one of the reasons for the sudden prevalence of “funk”; not its commercialization but the very fact of its infiltration into today’s jazz scene.
Some of the players who have come from the r&b bands in recent years are Blue Mitchell, David Newman, Dannie Richmond and Booker Ervin. Another is Harold Floyd Brooks, better known as Tina. Tina is a corruption of Tiny or Teeny, a nickname from Brooks’ youth in keeping with his size at the time. At 28 (born June 7, 1932), Tina is full-grown and no shrimp but the sobriquet seems here to stay.
Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina (anyone who was ever stationed at Fort Bragg will remember this town), Tina came to New York with his family when he was thirteen. While he was in high school, he began playing the C-melody saxophone. “My first teacher was my older brother David, a tenor man who plays like Don Byas ond Arnett Cobb. He’s with Clyde McPhatter now. Then I switched to alto and tenor. My twin brother started with me but he gave it up”, is Tina’s tale of his beginning as a player.
Of course, like any other youngster interested in jazz, especially a young musician, Brooks listened to a lot of records. “Prez was the first one to really get my attention”, he remembers.
From the late ‘40s to the early ‘50s, Tina gigged professionally with the r&b bands of Sonny Thompson, Charles Brown, Amos Milburn and Joe Morris. Then he decided that he wanted to take up harmony and theory with Sy Oliver. Sy couldn’t take him but recommended Herbert Bourne with whom Tina studied for a year and a half. Day jobs sustained his finances during this period; informal jam sessions nourished his jazz spirit. Then, in the mid-Fifties, he went on tour with Lionel Hampton. “No one has a chance to stretch out in that band. That’s one of the reasons I left”, declares Tina.
At the Blue Morocco, in the Bronx, he did get a chance to play with trumpeter Benny Harris. Benny, one of the first to follow Gillespie and Parker in the early ‘40s, taught Tina new tunes, chord patterns and generally encouraged him. He had enough regard for his playing to suggest to Alfred Lion that Blue Note record him. As a result, Tina took part in several blowing sessions with Jimmy Smith (Blue Note 4002 and 4011) and Kenny Burrell (Blue Note 1596/1597 and 4021). His own date came about because of his work on these.
Tina met Freddie Hubbard at a session at Count Basie’s. They found they liked each other’s playing and used each other on their respective Blue Note dates. (Hear Blue Note 4040.) Tina feels that Freddie “really caught the mood of my compositions”.
Hubbard, a 22-year old from Indianapolis, has played with Sonny Rollins, Slide Hampton and is currently with Jay Jay Johnson. Freddie explains that his first inspiration was Miles Davis. When he came to New York in 1958, his playing was in a Clifford Brown groove but now is much more personal. Musicians around New York consider him to be one of the brightest new trumpet stars.
Pianist Duke Jordan, who served importantly with Charlie Parker in the ‘40s and Stan Getz ¡n 1950, has never really had the recognition he deserves. His spare, melodic style has always been distinctively individual. In addition to his thoughtful solos, he is, as always, a sensitive accompanist.
Sam Jones, the bassist with Cannonball Adderley’s quintet, recently won the new star award in the Down Beat International Critics’ Poll. No one was more deserving. Sam is a bulwark in any rhythm section where he plants his bass.
Arthur Taylor is the ubiquitous one. You can find his name on many record albums. Its presence usually insures that the swing department has been well taken care of. Although not so old, A.T. is an old pro whose work is held in high esteem in New York musicians’ circles and beyond.
Besides assuming the leader’s duties on this date, Tina Brooks also wrote five of the six songs used here for bases of improvisation. That they are more than just this is exemplified by the way they achieve the gamut of moods from the down and dirty Good Old Soul to the warm and embracing Nothing Ever Changes My Love For You. Up Tight’s Creek and Miss Hazel are boppish swingers. The former has an excellent Jordan solo; the latter demonstrates how a fast number can be extremely lyrical. Theme For Doris again shows Brooks’ liking for a minor key. It also reiterates the kind of strength-with-tenderness that is evident in his playing. I think the Jazztet should pick up on Doris. It would seem to suit them.
True Blue is down home but neither Tina or Freddie are self-conscious or put their audience on. There are some nice little commas and apostrophes in the line.
In writing about Tina on the back of The Sermon, I said: “From an influence of the early-Fifties Sonny Rollins and Hank Mobley, who was also strongly shaped by the Rollins of that period, Tina has gone his own way. To do this within an already established framework ¡s, in some senses, as much of an accomplishment as forming a completely new style.”
Today, Tina Brooks is even more himself. His playing has that confidence now. In what is a happy cycle, the assurance with which he speaks can only engender even further advances. He is strong without being brittle; there is depth and sincerity of feeling at all tempos. And there is that necessary fire without the blowing of sirens.
In the last year, Brooks has gigged around New York and as Jackie McLean’s understudy in The Connection, has appeared on stage in a playing-acting role at the Living Theatre. He has also been a member of a rehearsal combo in the Bronx with pianist Al Walker and trumpeter Oliver Beener.
Tina states his philosophy this Way: “I want to express myself rather than be a killer technically but in order to do this, I have to grow technically.”
I don’t think Tina Brooks has to worry about growing; he’s taking the right musical vitamins.
— IRA GITLER
Cover Design by REID MILES
Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER
Sam Jones performs by courtesy of Riverside Records
Udiscover Music Review
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/tina-brooks-minor-move-blue-note-album/
Harold “Tina” Brooks’ life and career fits one of those classic what-might-have-been scenarios. He began recording for Blue Note Records, initially as a 25-year-old sideman for organist Jimmy Smith, in March 1958. Impressing the label’s boss, Alfred Lion, he was given a shot as a bandleader, recording the noteworthy album True Blue in 1960. After 1961, however, Brooks – who had also played with Kenny Burrell, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, and Freddie Redd – never recorded another note. He eventually disappeared from the New York jazz scene altogether, as heroin addiction, the scourge of many a jazz musician in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, took its toll. On August 14, 1974, Brooks was dead, aged 42, his work at Blue Note a distant memory. In the jazz public’s eyes, the doomed saxophonist was just a one-album wonder who had never reached his potential. Little did they know that a number of albums sat in the vaults, just waiting to be discovered; among them was his first-ever session as a bandleader, Minor Move.
Producer Michael Cuscuna’s discovery, during the latter half of the 70s, of previously unreleased Brooks album masters in the company’s vaults warranted a complete revision of Brooks as a musician. Recorded on the afternoon of Sunday, March 16, 1958, at Van Gelder Studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, Minor Move documents what happened when Alfred Lion assembled a quintet to showcase Brooks’ talent.
The line-up for the session consisted of a 19-year-old trumpet prodigy called Lee Morgan – by then already a veteran of Blue Note recording sessions, having signed to the label in 1956 – alongside rising hard bop pianist Sonny Clark (also signed to Blue Note), bassist Doug Watkins, and a 39-year-old drummer, Art Blakey, whose day job was leading the successful hard bop group The Jazz Messengers. It was a fine ensemble that married youth with experience and, judging from Brooks’ performances, the young man who was born in North Carolina, on June 7, 1932, wasn’t fazed by such stellar company.
Minor Move opens with “Nutville,” the first of two original tunes on the five-track album. It’s a midtempo blues built on a lightly-swinging undertow propelled by Watkins’ firm walking bassline and Blakey’s in-the-pocket drum groove. After a harmonized head theme played by the horns, the drummer’s signature press roll introduces the first solo, by Lee Morgan, who demonstrates his total command of his horn with lithe runs and clever flourishes. Another Blakey press roll is the cue for Morgan to lay out and Brooks to take center stage; he confidently obliges by delivering a long, snaking tenor solo that’s by turns muscular and lyrical. All except Blakey drop out to allow Doug Watkins to reveal his bass prowess in a short passage before the head theme is reprised.
The Jerome Kern-Dorothy Fields standard “The Way You Look Tonight” is often played as a ballad, but Brooks’ version transforms the song into an energetic hard bop swinger with fine solos from all the participants. Brooks is particularly impressive with the fluidity of his playing as melodies spill from his horn in liquid phrases.
Another standard, “Star Eyes” (co-written by Gene DePaul, author of another fine evergreen, “Teach Me Tonight”) was often used as a vehicle for improv by the great bebop altoist Charlie Parker. Here, Brooks and his confreres attack the tune at a brisk tempo, with Morgan using a mute at the piece’s beginning and end. After Brooks’ solo, Sonny Clark shows why he was so highly regarded as a pianist. More top-drawer playing comes from Lee Morgan, whose horn phrases are alternately cool and florid.
The start of Minor Move’s title track, a Brooks original, exudes a Latin feel with its harmonized twin horns riding on a syncopated Blakey groove driven by tinkling ride cymbals and featuring Clark’s laconic piano punctuations. The song morphs into a crisply-paced swinger driven by Watkins’ walking bass during the solo passages. Brooks pours out molten phrases, followed by Morgan, whose declamatory approach is almost brash. Sonny Clark’s piano solo, by contrast, evinces a natural elegance as it glides over Watkins’ and Blakey’s simmering rhythms.
“Everything Happens To Me” is Minor Move’s only slow ballad. Sonny Clark’s understated piano sets the scene, laying a solid foundation for Brooks’ subdued but sure-footed and smoky tenor saxophone lines. Watkins plays with both precision and economy while Blakey, usually renowned for his bombast and power, keeps the rhythmic pulse beating quietly and unobtrusively in the background. The song ends with a lovely tenor saxophone cadenza by Brooks.
We’ll never really know why Minor Move was left on the shelf alongside the other posthumously released Brooks sessions, Street Singer, Back To The Tracks, and The Waiting Game. Thankfully for jazz fans, when Michael Cuscuna heard it, he granted the album a release, and it was issued for the first time by King Records in Japan, in 1980. Minor Move later appeared on CD for the first time in 2000 as part of Blue Note’s limited edition Connoisseur series.
Now, decades later, the album has been lovingly mastered from Rudy Van Gelder’s original two-track master tape by Kevin Gray under the supervision of producer Joe Harley, getting a new lease of life via Blue Note’s acclaimed Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl series. Its revival will prove that Tina Brooks was a major, not a minor, tenor saxophonist.
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