GXF-3072

Tina Brooks - Minor Move

Released - 1980

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, March 16, 1958
Lee Morgan, trumpet; Tina Brooks, tenor sax; Sonny Clark, piano; Doug Watkins, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

tk.7 The Way You Look Tonight
tk.9 Nutville
tk.10 Star Eyes
tk.11 Everything Happens To Me
tk.15 Minor Move

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Nutville	Tina Brooks	March 16 1958
The Way You Look Tonight	D. Fields-J. Kern	March 16 1958
Side Two
Star Eyes	Don Raye-Gene De Paul	March 16 1958
Minor Move	Tina Brooks	March 16 1958
Everything Happens To Me	M. Dennis-T. Adair	March 16 1958

Liner Notes

It is an eerie, uncomfortable fact that only one of the men who appear on this recording is still alive. But among the many musicians whose careers have been cut short by one aspect or another of the so-called "jazz life," there are some special cases — artists whose acutely sensitive, often melancholic music seems to have predicted their time with us would be brief.

Tenor saxophonists Harold Floyd "Tina" Brooks was such a man. And fortunately, we have recordings to prove that his skills have not been exaggerated by retrospective romanticism.

Most of those recordings were made for the Blue Note label. Brooks' own album "True Blue," Freddie Hubbard's "Open Sesame," a Jimmy and a Kenny Burrell jam session date, half of Jackie McLean's "Jackie's Bag," Freddie Redd's "Shades of Redd," and a version Redd's score issued on the Felsted label under Howard McGhee's name.

Collectors have been aware that at least one other Brooks-led album exists — "Back to the Tracks," with Blue Mitchell, Kenny Drew, Paul Chambers, and Art Taylor. But some reason "Bock to the Tracks" was never released, even though the cover of the album appeared on some Blue Note inner sleeves. Now, however, thanks to Michael Cuscuna's exploration of the Blue Note archives, have the album entitled "Minor Move." And Cuscuna reports that yet another Brooks album was recorded — with Johnny Coles, Wilbur Ware, and Philly Joe Jones.

The pre-1960 details of Brooks' career were outlined by Ira Gitler in his liner notes for "True Blue." Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina on June 7, 1932, Brooks move to New York with his family at the age of 13. He played C-melody saxophone in high school, and then switched to alto and tenor under the tutelage of his elder brother, David "Bubba" Brooks, an Arnett Cobb-Don Byas disciple who can often be heard now with Bill Doggett's combo. But as Brooks told Gitler: "Prez was the first one to really get my attention."

Professionally, Brooks' early days were spent in R&B bands (Charles Brown, Amos Milburn, Joe Morris, etc.), and he toured briefly with Lionel Hampton in the mid-1950s. He studied theory and harmony with Herbert Bourne and received less formal but apparently quite valuable guidance from trumpeter Benny Harris, with whom Brooks worked at a club in the Bronx called the Blue Morocco.

It was Harris who recommended him to Blue Note's Alfred Lion, and on Feb. 25, 1958 Brooks entered Rudy Van Gelder's studio for the first time, participating on the Jimmy Smith date that would be spread over "House Party," "The Sermon" and that recently issued "Confirmation." Obviously impressed by what he had heard, Lion brought Brooks back as a leader on March 16, 1958 to record the session now issued as "Minor Move."

Further recording dates followed, most notably "True Blue" and "Shades of Redd," but gradually Brooks faded from the scene. According to trumpeter Oliver Beener, who was both a friend and a close musical associate of Brooks, his playing days had pretty much come to an end by the early 1970s. And on August 13, 1974, Brooks died - a victim, Beener says, "of general dissipation."

That Brooks was a man of unusual sensitivity is obvious from his music. He was, says Beener, "a sentimentalist — his favorite tune was 'My Devotion' — and especially on blues Tina's tone sounded like a prayer." (Brooks' first name, incidentally, is pronounced "Tee-na," not "Ty-na" — a variation Gitler explains, on Brooks' childhood moniker, "Teeny." )

Lester Young clearly was his primary inspiration, and in that it is interesting that Brooks began on the C-melody sax, the obsolete horn played by Young's idol, Frankie Trumbauer. One can also detect traces of Hank Mobley, Sonny Stitt, and Sonny Rollins in Brooks' music; and there are signs that, for a time, he and his contemporary Wayne Shorter were developing along parallel lines.

But as effective as he was in orthodox hard-bop contexts, Brooks was essentially an individualist. His sound, first of all, set him apart — the prayer-like tone that Beener speaks of. It was an airy, keening, often speech-like approach to the horn that instantly identified Brooks as one of those musicians for whom feeling and sound were one.

Equally important were the ways in which he created a feeling of resolution within restlessness. Phrase by phrase, his lines are formed so naturally and perfectly that the melodic shapes seem almost tangible — three dimensional objects that one can contemplate at will. But these purely lyrical resolutions are placed within a harmonic context that denies the possibility of rest.

The sonata-like patterns explored by Sonny Rollins — in which melodic and harmonic elements suddenly coalesce, releasing their accumulated tensions in cadential outbursts — are alien to Brooks' music. Instead, he hears both melody and harmony as linear forces that exist in a perpetual equilibrium, a universe in which the forming process never ceases and tensions are not resolved but transformed into the new terms of an endless lyricism.

This is the world that Lester Young built; and allowing for Brooks' more hard-edged approach to rhythm, there are times when his music recalls Young's clarinet solos with the Kansas City Five. A similar comparison — more far-fetched but equally genuine - can be made between Brooks' music and that of Gabriel Faure, in which the lyrical line, buoyed by wavelike shifts in harmony and rhythm, flows calmly and gracefully toward an ever-receding horizon.

While Brooks' solo on the title track of "True Blue' is the one example of his work I would preserve at all costs, "Minor Move" may be his most satisfying album — although the as-yet-unheard music on "Back to the Tracks" and the date with Coles, Ware, and Jones may change that estimate. "Minor Move" does have some rough edges, but except for Duke Jordan and perhaps Paul Chambers, the sidemen "True Blue" (Freddie Hubbard and Art Tayler) are clearly outclassed by Brooks' partners on this earlier date.

Lee Morgan, in 1958, was in his "bull ring" period, a time when everything he played seemed about to burst into a fanfare. He is in top form here, creating technically remarkable lines that fully express the exuberance of a man who was, at the age of 19, already a young master.

Watkins, according to his one-time boss Red Garland, "was a very true bass player. The note was right on, never a quarter tone sharp or flat. And his walking rhythm, his feeling, was perfect." To which I would add that the sheer lilt of Watkins' lines, the way everything he played seemed to "sing," reminds me of Oscar Pettiford.

As for Art Blakey, it goes without saying that he is modern jazz premier ensemble drummer. And Sonny Clark's stature as an accompanist and a soloist steadily increases with the passage of time.

"Nutville" is a groovy, medium-tempo blues that finds everyone in a good form — Clark displaying his superb sense of swing, Morgan heating up from the first chorus on and eventually leaping into implied double-time, and Brooks soaring ahead with remarkable confidence for a man who is making his debut as a leader in very fast company. Toward the end of his solo, though, a convoluted Mobley-like passage leaves everyone unsure as to where "one" is. Presumably, that is the reason Lion and Van Gelder removed Watkins' second walking chorus which accounts for the abrupt jump into the final statement of the theme.

Next comes "The Way You Look Tonight," a piece that Beener says was one of Brooks' favorite vehicles. It's easy to hear why, as the tenorman glides through the graceful changes of Jerome Kern's standard in a kind of lyrical overdrive. The emotional climate of his solo is almost jolly, and at one point he quotes another very romantic tune, Rodgers and Hart's "Blue Moon."

- LAWRENCE KART

Original Session Produced by ALFRED LION
Recorded on March 16, 1958 at Van Gelder Studios, Hackensack, New Jersey
Recording Engineer RUDY VAN GELDER