ST-40536

Tina Brooks - The Waiting Game

Released - 1999/2002/2021

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 2, 1961
Johnny Coles, trumpet; Tina Brooks, tenor sax; Kenny Drew, piano; Wilbur Ware, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums.

tk.1 Dhyana
tk.6 The Waiting Game
tk.7 Talkin' About
tk.19 David The King
tk.21 One For Myrtle
tk.22 Stranger In Paradise

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Talkin' About	Tina Brooks	March 2 1961
One For Myrtle	Tina Brooks	March 2 1961
Dhyana	Tina Brooks	March 2 1961
Side Two
David The King	Tina Brooks	March 2 1961
Stranger In Paradise	Borodin-Forrest-Wright	March 2 1961
The Waiting Game	Tina Brooks	March 2 1961

Liner Notes

TINA BROOKS's story, though in the extreme, is one heard all too often in jazz world: personal pain, career frustrations, public ignorance or indifference, drug abuse, early death and belated posthumous recognition. Harold "Tina" Brooks and his twin brother Harry were born in Fayetteville, North Carolina on June 7, 1932, the youngest of eight children. In 1944, the family moved to New York City. Shy, short and hardly streetwise, Tina was harassed by gangs and once mugged and robbed of his saxophone, so he moved back to Fayetteville for all but his last year of schooling.

When he graduated in 1949, he was already working professionally at dances and social functions. The next year, he replaced his older brother David "Bubba" Brooks (by that time an established tenor saxophonist in certain circles) in Sonny Thompson's R & B band. Stints with Charles Brown, Joe Morris and Amos Milburn followed until Tina tired of the relentless touring. In 1955, he joined Lionel Hampton briefly, but his taste was moving toward small-group modern jazz. Toward that end, he began to study theory and harmony.

In 1956, Brooks met the legendary bebop trumpeter Little Bennie Harris at the Blue Morocco in the Bronx. Harris schooled him in the intricacies of modern jazz, introduced him to kindred spirits like Elmo Hope and later brought him to the attention of Blue Note's Alfred Lion. Jimmy Lyons, Herman Riley, Junior Cook, Bill Hardman, Oliver Beener and Les Spann were among the group of musicians that Tina ran with, jamming in various Harlem and Bronx clubs.

Honing his skills at countless jazz sessions and absorbing the achievements of such influences as Lester Young, Wardell Gray and Hank Mobley, Tina developed a style of his own. His sound was lyrical and distinctive, his notes distinct and articulated and his ideas shaped and flowing. Trumpeter Oliver Beener, one of his closet friends, called him "a sentimentalist — his favorite tune was 'My Devotion' — and especially on the blues, Tina's tone sounded like a prayer." An excellent description of the exceptional beauty that came out of Brook's tenor.

Although he'd been on Sonny Thompson and Amos Millburn record dates in the early fifties, his first appearance as an improvising jazz artist was on the February 25, 1958 Jimmy Smith session for Blue Note that produced the 20-minute blues classic "The Sermon." Except for a Howard McGhee album on Felsted, all of Brooks's recorded output would be on Blue Note. Given his talent and the recording activity of the late fifties, it's surprising that he did not appear elsewhere. And despite Alfred Lion's support and belief in the saxophonist, some of what Tina recorded for Blue Note as a sideman and three of the four albums he made as a leader sat in the vaults until the 1980s.

Three weeks after his performance on the Jimmy Smith date, Tina was recording his first album with Lee Morgan, Sonny Clark, Doug Watkins and Art Blakey. but the album, which came to be known as Minor Move, wasn't released. Nor was a live Jimmy Smith recording at Small's Paradise a month later, which was ultimately issued as Cool Blues. Then in May, Kenny Burrell mode a marathon session featuring Tina that was issued as Blues Lights Volumes One And Two.

Tina's next appearance came in August of the next year when he and Art Blakey were added for several tunes on Kenny Burrell's The Five Spot Café. On June 19, 1960, Tina appeared on Freddie Hubbard's first album Open Sesame, contributing tunes and arrangements as well as superb solos. Freddie returned the favor a week later for Tina's first issued album True Blue. At the time, Tino was Jackie McLean's understudy in the Freddie Redd Quartet, which appeared on stage nightly in the Jack Gelber play The Connection. And that August, Redd used both Brooks and McLean on his Shades Of Redd album of Redd's score to The Connection).

On September 1, Jackie McLean assembled a sextet with Brooks, Blue Mitchell, Kenny Drew, Paul Chambers and Art Taylor for a wonderful session, half of which would be used on Jackie's Bag. Seven weeks later, Brooks would use the same sideman for his next Blue Note album. When they couldn't get a satisfactory take on one original, "David The King," Blue Note borrowed "Street Singer," a Brooks original from the McLean sextet session, to complete the album, which was entitled Back To The Tracks, given a catalog number, pictured on inner sleeves and listed in catalogs, but never released!

In January 1961, he and McLean appeared on Freddie Redd's third album, Redd's Blues, which was not issued at the time. In March, Tina made his fourth album as a leader, which was edited and sequenced, but again not issued. Both were ultimately issued in the mid-'80s on Mosaic and make their first Blue Note appearances now. They were his last sessions.

Tina's final album is now appropriately called The Waiting Game since he died in 1974 waiting for three of his four albums to be issued. With the exception of Philly Joe Jones, the personnel was not made up of frequent Blue Note contributors.

This date was, in fact, the first Blue Note appearance of Johnny Coles, who'd already made a name for himself in the bands of Gil Evans and James Moody. His playing is so strong and lyrical on this session that it's amazing that Alfred Lion did not use him more often. The fact that he was signed to Epic and would make his first album, The Warm Sound Of Johnny Coles, a month later may have had something to do with it. In 1963, he appeared on Horace Parlan's Happy Frame Of Mind and Grant Green's Am I Blue and made his own Blue Note album Little Johnny C. He would not reappear on the label until April 1969 as a member of Herbie Hancock's sextet on The Prisoner.

Kenny Drew, though not a frequent contributor to Blue Note, was an important one. He made his recording debut on the label in 1950 as part of Howard McGhee's All-Stars. He also made his first album as a leader for the label, Introducing The Kenny Drew Trio in 1953. His next appearance was four years later on one of the greatest albums in jazz history, John Coltrane's Blue Train. In 1960, he appeared on the Jackie's Bag and Back To The Tracks session and finished the year with his own Blue Note album Undercurrent. The next year, he cut this Brooks date, Dexter Gordon's Dexter Calling and Grant Green's Sunday Mornin'. He moved to Copenhagen in 1964 where he remained for the rest of his life. That June, he participated in Dexter Gordon's One Flight Up, done in Paris.

Like Drew, Wilbur Ware was in a short-lived edition of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers that featured Ira Sullivan on tenor saxophone. It brought the great bassist from Chicago to New York. One of his first sessions was J.R. Monterose's Blue Note album, which also included Ira Sullivan and Blakey, followed by Lee Morgan's debut Indeed!. In 1957, Ware made his name with the Thelonious Monk Quartet and recorded for Blue Note on several important albums: Hank Mobley's Hank, Sonny Clark's Dial S For Sonny and Sonny Rollins's masterpiece A Night At The Village Vanguard. A frequent contributor to Riverside sessions, Ware's next appearance for Blue Note was this Brooks session; his final one was a haunting Grant Green trio session five month later that was ultimately issued in Japan as Remembering and, more recently, as Standards.

Philly Joe Jones's contributions to Blue Note are too numerous to mention. They began in 1953 with Lou Donaldson-Clifford Brown and Elmo Hope sessions and continued until Hank Mobley's The Flip, recorded in Paris in 1969. With Miles Davis, Bill Evans and his own groups and on countless record dates by all the jazz greats, Philly Joe was a consummate drummer with an incredible sense of swing and musical literacy that added dimension to every situation.

With the exception of "Stranger In Paradise," this is a program of Tina Brooks originals. "Talkin' About" is a minor riff blues with a shuffle beat. Coles solos first effectively using half-valve techniques evocative of Clark Terry. The equally soulful Brooks and Drew follow. This is the kind of groove that Alfred Lion loved.

"One For Myrtle" is a burner, paced so fast that there is time for all five men to solo. Tina is first and he's simply dazzling. "Dhyana" is a minor swinger; listen to the long lines that Brooks develops so fluidly in his solo.

"David The King", attempted without success on "Back To The Track," has a Middle Eastern fiavor that would lead one to believe that this is named after the biblical king. But surely, Brooks intended a nod to his supportive father and mentor older brother. An especially strong Coles takes the first solo, followed by Tina, Kenny and Wilbur.

Tina has the melody to himself on "Stranger In Paradise", which is taken up-tempo with a rhumba beat under the bridge. Coles, Brooks and Drew solo in that order. "The Waiting Game" with a 12-bar A section and a-bar bridge, has magnificent solos from Brooks, Coles (developing nice long lines) and Drew.

Alfred Lion felt that the ensembles on Minor Move were too ragged, not up to Blue Note standards and chose not to release it. The second album True Blue was issued. Tina followed it with two exceptional albums, Back To The Tracks and this one. Both were prepared for release, but neither appeared. Perhaps the sales of True Blue were so low that the independent label feared losing money by releasing them; Lion did not remember the circumstances when I asked him. But they are now available and ours to cherish.

It is a crime that Tina Brooks was not appreciated in his time, by music lovers or by himself. He never recorded after 1961; there was the occasional out-of-town gig like a Yale University concert with Herbie Nichols and Roswell Rudd in 1960 and a brief tour with Ray Charles's band. But primarily, Tina continued to play around the Bronx with creative musicians like Beener, Elmo Hope, Charles Tolliver, Don Pullen and Barry Altschul and did Latin and R&B gigs in the area to pay the rent. Ultimately, frustration and heroin got the better of him. When he died of kidney failure on August 13, 1974, he had not been able to play saxophone for several years. The final irony: his gorgeous voice was silenced long before he found any peace in death.

-MICHAEL CUSCUNA

Original Sessions Produced by ALFRED LION
Recorded on March 2, 1961 at Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Recording Engineer RUDY VAN GELDER
Cover Design by KAORU TAKU
Photography FRANCIS WOLFF - Mosaic Images, LLC
LP Reissue Supervision by JOE HARLEY
LP Mastering by KEVIN GRAY, Cohearent Audio

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

GXF-3067

Jackie McLean / Tina Brooks - Street Singer

Released - 1980

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, September 1, 1960
Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Jackie McLean, alto sax; Tina Brooks, tenor sax; Kenny Drew, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, drums.

tk.3 Melonae's Dance
tk.5 Appointment In Ghana
tk.6 Medina
tk.11 Isle Of Java
tk.12 Street Singer
tk.15 A Ballad For Doll

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Melonae's Dance	Jackie McLean	September 1 1960
Appointment in Ghana	Jackie McLean	September 1 1960
Medina	Tina Brooks	September 1 1960
Side Two
Isle of Java	Tina Brooks	September 1 1960
Street Singer	Tina Brooks	September 1 1960
A Ballad for Doll	Jackie McLean	September 1 1960

Liner Notes

On April 17, 1960, Jackie McLean went into Rudy Van Gelder's studio for Blue Note with Blue Mitchell, Walter Bishop, Paul Chambers and Art Taylor. The result was Capuchin Swing.

That session must have pleased all concerned because Blue Note brought the same ensemble (with the exception of Kenny Drew in place of Bishop) back on September 1 under the leadership of both McLean and Tina Brooks. It is that session, presented in its entirety and in order of recording, that makes up with album.

Melonae's Dance, Appointment in Ghana, Isle of Java and A Ballad For Doll were led by McLean, who solos first on each and who composed three of the tunes. Melonae's Dance remained unissued, while the other three titles appeared on the album Jackie's Bag.

Street Singer and Medina, both unissued until now, were led by Tina Brooks. This same group without McLean was brought back into the studio on October 20. Street Singer and four of the tunes from the October quintet session were to be issued as Back To The Tracks by Brooks. For whatever reasons, the album never made it to final release.

Harold "Tina" Brooks and Jackie McLean were closely associated during this period. Brooks was Jackie's understudy in the play the Connection, which incorporated a jazz quartet under the leadership of Freddie Redd into the action on the stage. Both saxophonists were on Redd's Shades of Redd album, recorded on August 13, 1960 and on another, yet unissued Redd session for Blue Note from January 1961.

Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina on June 7, 1932, Tina Brooks (whose nickname comes from 'tiny' or 'teeny' which indicated his stature) moved to the Bronx with his family at the age of 13. His older brother played saxophone and inspired Tina to start playing in high school. He moved from C Melody to alto and finally to tenor saxophone. In the late forties and early fifties, Tina gigged with the R & B bands of trumpeter Joe Morris, pianist Sonny Thompson, Amos Milburn and Charles Brown among others. In the mid fifties, he was in Lionel Hampton's band. But he finally left the road to gig near his own neighborhood in New York.

At the Club Blue Morocco in the Bronx, he worked with trumpeter Benny Harris, who became a tutor of sorts, educating the saxophonist to the complexities and harmonies of modern jazz. It was Harris who also recommended Brooks to Alfred Lion.

Almost all of Brooks' work in documented by his few session for Blue Note. in 1958, he participated in an all-star Jimmy Smith date that produced the albums Houseparty, The Sermon and Confirmation. He was also on the Kenny Burrell session that was issued in two volumes as Blue Lights and on Burrell's On View At The Five Spot. He played on and wrote two tunes for Freddie Hubbard's first album and was on the aforementioned Freddie Redd sessions.

His only venture outside of the Blue Note label was a Howard McGhee album of Freddie Redd's music for The Connection, which was only issued in England on the Felsted label.

As a leader, Brooks recorded four albums between March 1958 and March 1961, but only the second date True Blue was ever issued. From March 16 1958, there exists his first date with Lee Morgan, Sonny Clark, Doug Watkins ad Art Taylor. From October 20, 1960 is the aforementioned session with Mitchell, Drew, Chambers and Art Taylor. Finally, from March 2, 1961 comes a date with Johny Coles, Drew, Wilbur Ware and Philly Joe Jones. Hopefully, these three remaining albums as well as the Freddie Redd album will someday come to light. Brooks' output was entirely too small as it is to see great music with in the vaults.

Brooks died in the late sixties when jazz was forgotten and when Tina was forgotten by jazz. His playing and visibility in the community of musicians who lived in the Bronx influenced many younger players, who were coming up in the neighborhood. Barry Altschul and Charles Tolliver, to name just two, remember the saxophonist's encouragement and inspiration.

Influenced by Lester Young, Hank Mobley and early Sonny Rollins, Tina was basically his own man. His ideas were at once original and perfectly logical in development. His phrasing was unique and implied an inate sense of structure. He had the ability to draw the listener into his own thought patterns and flow of ideas. He never wasted a note, and, for all his R & B experience, he never grandstanded to camouflage a lack of ideas. He could take a solo anywhere and have it be as sensible as it was orthodox.

As a composer and small group arranger, he was equally unique and special. His compositions never fell back on riffs in place of a true melody and never relied heavily on the common chord progressions and structures. His tunes are significant, different and immediately captivating and memorable.

Jackie McLean's story and his stature as one of jazz' great artists is well known from countless articles and liner notes over the years and from his chapter in A.B. Spellman's superb book Black Music: Four Lives in The Be-Bop business.

Blue Mitchell, who had become well known to Blue Note fans through his work with Lou Donaldson and Horace Silver, was, along with Paul Chambers and Art Taylor, on Jackie's previous session Capuchin Swing. That came about from a Monday night Birdland jam session at which McLean and Mitchell found themselves together as the front line.

The trumpeter, who died of bone cancer in June, 1979, became an increasingly familiar Blue Note regular. Upon leaving Horace Silver in early 1964, he secured his own contract with the label. By the end of the sixties, his recording were becoming increasingly compromising and commercial, but in live performance, he was at the top of his form. In his final years, he co-led a Los Angeles-based group with Harold Land. The made a superb album Mapenzi on Concord Jazz.

Paul Chambers was the solid, but supple backbone of the great Miles Davis quintets and sextets from 1955 until 1961 and a frequent contributor to Blue Note sessions until his death in January, 1969. He was the bassist for three of the four Jackie McLean Blue Note albums that led up to this one. As a soloist, he was known chiefly for his arco work, but his two solos here on Isle Of Java and Street Singer and pizzicato.

Art Taylor and Kenny Drew, also Blue Note regulars, grew up in the same neighborhood as Jackie. And the three often played together as teenagers. Both moved to Europe in the sixties, where they still live in a more respectful and relaxed environment than their homeland could over give them.

Drew's comping throughout this set is especially vital and inspirational as he feeds the soloists and maintains the interesting structures of the material at hand. A.T. is consistent and musical, generating the proceedings with his non-stop Blackeyesque hi-hat.

The album is sequenced in the actual order in which the tunes were recorded. The opening Melonae's Dance, one of several compositions which McLean titles after his daughter, an AABA tune with an especially fine bridge. The melody is played by the trumpet with the saxes playing section parts. McLean leaps right into his solo with characteristic fire, building three solid choruses. As for Drew's comping, check him out behind the altoists on the first bridge in the first chorus. Mitchell, Brooks and Drew follow with fine solos. Brooks' figure over the bridge in his second chorus is so surprising that even he sound disoriented for a few bars after.

Appointment in Ghana, one of Jackie's best known tunes, was recorded by the Jazz Crusaders a couple of years later and re-recorded by Jackie in 1978 for the East Wind label. But this first version remains the definitive one. Like Melonae's Dance, it is an AABA structure played with the trumpet taking the melody and with a solo order of alto sax, trumpet, tenor sax and piano. The rhythm section has a deliberate, hypnotic quality that is very much in the tradition of Miles Davis. Kenny drew's a solo is intriguing in its seamless, thoughtful approach.

Medina is an example of Tina Brooks' compositional talent. It is a 40-bar, A-B-B1-B2-A theme, with the trumpet again taking the melody line. Brooks' two choruses are rivoting in their melodic and rhythmic freshness. Although Blue fumbles in his second chorus by going to the A section 8 bars early, he does recover the ball. McLean and Kenny are especially melodic in their solos.

Isle Of Java was composed by Brooks, but released under McLean's name. This must have been intended from the beginning because Jackie is the first soloist. The ensemble shifts roles as the alto tackles the biting lead melody while the trumpet and tenor play a cycle of riffs. The tune itself is unusual and tense in feeling. Leonard Feather described it best as "characterized chiefly by its whole-tome, double augmented basis. The Line itself is simple while the chord structure gives the work its personality." McLean jumps right out of the melody into a blistering solo, followed by Mitchell, Brooks, Drew and Chambers, who all remain true to the non-stop, edgy, vibrant quality of the composition.

Tina Brooks' Street Singer, after the introduction, is a 32 bar theme repeated twice. Brooks again demonstrates an unusually original and well thought out development of his ideas. Blue turns out his finest solo of the date, perhaps because this tune comes closest the sort of material that he liked to play. Jackie plays a surprisingly short, concise, one chorus solo. Drew gives us two and finally Chambers plays one. The roles of the front line are equal here as they play the theme ensemble.

The trumpet lead with saxes backing arrangement returns for McLean's tribute to his wife Dolly, A Ballad For Doll. The only soloist is Kenny Drew, whose approach to the tune is dense, chordal and dramatic.

Jackie McLean told Leonard Feather at the time of this session, "It was the first time I had written anything for three horns. That was a challenge for me, because I didn't have much musical education and most of what I know about writing I found out for myself." It is also more than likely that his tenure with the Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop had an effect on his unusual writing abilities.

Tina Brooks, too, was basically self-taught and credited Benny Harris for most of his on the job training. Nonetheless, each of these artists possessed the imagination and creativity to compose enduring and interesting piece on which to play; talent can be nurtured but not taught. And the three horn configuration seemed to inspire both men to take advantage of the situation in terms of the material and the arrangements, which are anything but stock three horn unison ensembles.

As improvisers, they were two of the freshest and strongest on the scene. It is incredible that McLean was and is so underrated and Brooks is so completely forgotten. No one ever sounded like McLean; his tone and attack are biting and impassioned; his phraseology, although rooted in be-bop, evolved into its own sphere. He plays with an intense, exacting conviction that could and has made lightweight listeners uncomfortable. As Art Taylor told Ira Gitler after the Capuchin Swing date, "There's nothing flighty about Jackie's playing. He plays hard and to the point. And talk about soul - that's real soul, none of that imitation jive."

Brook's playing on the surface is not as penetrating. Like Warne Haruh or Hank Mobley, his is a style that is endlessly inventive and absorbing once the listener makes the effort to focus on it.

Perhaps it is because the public at large doesn't put in any effort in listengin to music, that great music of all cultures remains the passion of a select few. Certainly, the small amount of energy required will being the listener many riches in return. Bobby Hutcherson once told me that he would worry about the quality of his music if he started selling millions of records, since mediocrity is what ultimately reaches the masses. I don't know if I buy that pessimistic thesis, but it seems to reflect the reality of today. The fate of someone so brilliant as Tina Brooks and the travails of someone so brilliant as Jackie McLean are reminders of the sad price that artists have to pay for that reality.

Michael Cuscuna

BLP 4052 (NR)

Tina Brooks - Back To The Tracks

Released - 1990

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, September 1, 1960
Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Jackie McLean, alto sax; Tina Brooks, tenor sax; Kenny Drew, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, drums.

tk.12 Street Singer

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, October 20, 1960
Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Tina Brooks, tenor sax; Kenny Drew, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, drums.

tk.3 Back To The Tracks
tk.7 The Ruby And The Pearl
tk.11 For Heaven's Sake
tk.13 The Blues And I

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Back to the Tracks	Tina Brooks	20/10/1960
Street Singer	Tina Brooks	01/09/1960
Side Two
The Blues and I	Tina Brooks	20/10/1960
For Heaven's Sake	Elise Bretton, Sherman Edwards, Donald Meyer	20/10/1960
The Ruby and The Pearl	Jay Livingston, Ray Evans	20/10/1960

Liner Notes

Harold Floyd Brooks and his twin brother Harry were born to David and Cornelia Brooks in Fayetteville, North Carolina on June 7, 1932. They were the youngest of eight children.

This close-knit family migrated en masse to the Bronx in New York City in 1944, when Harold was 12 years old. He was already being called Tina (pronounced Teena), a grade school nickname that came from his tiny or teeny size. Around this time, he started playing the C Melody saxophone. In addition to school instruction, he took private lessons with his older brother David Brooks, Jr., whose nickname is Bubba. Tina moved from the C Melody to alto and finally settled on the tenor as his instrument.

Meanwhile, Bubba was becoming established as an tenor saxophonist. In 1950, he joined pianist Sonny Thompson's band. When he took a leave of absence in late 1950, Tina took his chair for a few months. In January of '51, Tina made his recording debut on one of Thompson's many King sessions done in Cincinnati.

Throughout the early fifties, Tina worked with local New York Latin bands and various R&B outfits such as those of Charles Brown, Joe Morris and he then joined Lionel Hampton's orchestra for the spring and summer of 1955. But he found this to be little more than another R&B gig with little room to stretch out.

In 1956, Brooks met trumpeter-composer Little Benny Harris at the Blue Morocco, a Bronx jazz club. Harris took the young tenor player under his wing and taught him the vocabulary and intricacies of modern jazz. Tina also developed a close friendship with the brilliant pianist-composer Elmo Hope.

He was assimilating early influences (Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker, Wardell Gray) and current models (Sonny Rollins and Honk Mobley) into a style of his own, which was rapidly taking shape.

Alfred Lion remembers Benny Harris calling him up to a Harlem club to hear Tina in late 1957. He immediately began recording Brooks on Blue Note at regular pace. He first hired Tina for a marathon Jimmy Smith recording on February 25, 1958. The tenor saxophonist played on three lengthy sextet tunes. The Sermon and House Party, two of Smith's most important and popular albums, each carried one of those tunes. When Blue Note recorded the organist at Small's Paradise that April with special guests (a session that was not issued until 1980), Tina was present.

On March 16, Lion gave Brooks his first recording dote as a leader. For whatever reasons, that excellent session sat in the vaults until 1980 when it was issued briefly in Japan as Minor Move. In may of '58, Tina and Junior Cook were tenor players on Kenny Burrell's all-star Blue Lights session. Then fifteen months passed before Brooks recorded again on a specially planned Blue Note live recording led by Burrell at the Five Spot.

Through his association with Blue Note, Tina met another great and underrated tenorman: Ike Quebec.

It was Quebec who introduced him to Freddie Hubbard: "Ike Ouebec introduced me to Tina at the 845 Club. Ike also introduced me to Alfred Lion. I loved Tina. He had a nice feeling. I got into him before got into Hank (Mobley). He would write shit out on the spot and it would be beautiful. He wrote Gypsy Blue me on the first record and I loved it. I just loved it. Tina made my first record date wonderful. He played beautifully. What a soulful, inspiring cat. I loved him."

Freddie's session took place on June 19, 1960. And Tina did play beautifully. He also wrote Open Sesame and Gypsy Blue and arranged But But Beautiful. Exactly one week later, Tina made his second album True Blue and Freddie Hvbbard was the trumpeter. Both albums were released that fall.

During 1959 and '60, Tina was the understudy for Jackie McLean in Jack Gelber's play The Connection, which was presented by The Living Theater. The pianist, composer and musical director was Freddie Redd. This association led to three more Blue Note dates. Both McLean and Brooks were on two Redd sessions. Under McLean's leadership, Tina played on and wrote three of the six tunes ("Medina," "Isle Of Java" and "Street Singer") for a wonderful sextet date. For McLean's next album, Jackie's Bag, Blue Note decided to pick the best of this and an earlier recording date, so only half of the sextet pieces were issued. The complete session was finally issued in Japan in 1979.

Seven weeks later, Tina went into the studio with the same sidemen that appeared on the McLean sextet date to make his third Blue Note album. Since one tune "David The King never made it to releasable quality, an album was assembled from the session which borrowed 'Street Singer" from Jackie's date. The album was titled "Back To The Tracks" and given the catalog number 4052. Its cover appeared on inner sleeves, and it was listed in Blue Note catalogs for a time, yet the album was never issued. This is one of about a dozen such instances in Blue Note's history. Yet a fourth Tina Brooks album was recorded in 1961. It was edited and sequenced for release. It too was not issued.

Tina Brooks never recorded after mid-1961. Throughout that decade, he picked up occasional Latin and R&B gigs, but primarily he worked around the Bronx at such clubs as Freddie's Bar, the 845 Club and the Blue Morocco with Oliver Beener, Elmo Hope, Don Pullen and many others. His work was a moving force that inspired younger Bronx musicians like trumpeter Charles Tolliver and drummer Barry Altschul.

Perhaps part of the reason that he never attained fame of any sort was his shy, reserved personality.

Tina was also one of many who hod chronic drug habit. The inevitable short hospital and prison stays would keep him off the music scene intermittently.

Tina Brooks died on August 13, 1974 of kidney failure or, as Beener put it, "general dissipation." He had been very ill and unable to play the saxophone for several years.

Tina Brooks was a magnificent talent who was among us all too briefly. He was a unique, sensitive improviser who could weave beautiful and complex tapestries through his horn. His lyricism, unity of ideas and inner logic were astounding. Far lesser talents have been far more celebrated.

— MICHAEL CUSCUNA

Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER