Harold “Tina” Brooks’ life and profession matches a type of traditional what-might-have-been situations. He started recording for Blue Be aware Information, 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, nevertheless, Brooks – who had additionally performed with Kenny Burrell, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, and Freddie Redd – by no means recorded one other notice. He finally disappeared from the New York jazz scene altogether, as heroin dependancy, the scourge of many a jazz musician within the 40s, 50s, and 60s, took its toll. On August 14, 1974, Brooks was useless, aged 42, his work at Blue Be aware a distant reminiscence. Within the jazz public’s eyes, the doomed saxophonist was only a one-album marvel who had by no means reached his potential. Little did they know that a variety of albums sat within the vaults, simply ready to be found; amongst them was his first-ever session as a bandleader, Minor Transfer.
Hearken to Minor Transfer on Apple Music and Spotify.
Producer Michael Cuscuna’s discovery, throughout the latter half of the 70s, of beforehand unreleased Brooks album masters within the firm’s vaults warranted a whole revision of Brooks as a musician. Recorded on the afternoon of Sunday, March 16, 1958, at Van Gelder Studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, Minor Transfer paperwork what occurred when Alfred Lion assembled a quintet to showcase Brooks’ expertise.
Stellar firm
The road-up for the session consisted of a 19-year-old trumpet prodigy referred to as Lee Morgan – by then already a veteran of Blue Be aware recording classes, having signed to the label in 1956 – alongside rising exhausting bop pianist Sonny Clark (additionally signed to Blue Be aware), bassist Doug Watkins, and a 39-year-old drummer, Artwork Blakey, whose day job was main the profitable exhausting bop group The Jazz Messengers. It was a fantastic ensemble that married youth with expertise and, judging from Brooks’ performances, the younger man who was born in North Carolina, on June 7, 1932, wasn’t fazed by such stellar firm.
Minor Transfer opens with “Nutville,” the primary of two authentic tunes on the five-track album. It’s a midtempo blues constructed on a lightly-swinging undertow propelled by Watkins’ agency strolling bassline and Blakey’s in-the-pocket drum groove. After a harmonized head theme performed by the horns, the drummer’s signature press roll introduces the primary solo, by Lee Morgan, who demonstrates his complete command of his horn with lithe runs and intelligent prospers. One other Blakey press roll is the cue for Morgan to put out and Brooks to take heart stage; he confidently obliges by delivering a protracted, snaking tenor solo that’s by turns muscular and lyrical. All besides Blakey drop out to permit Doug Watkins to disclose his bass prowess in a brief passage earlier than the top theme is reprised.
The Jerome Kern-Dorothy Fields customary “The Way You Look Tonight” is usually performed as a ballad, however Brooks’ model transforms the music into an lively exhausting bop swinger with fantastic solos from all of the members. Brooks is especially spectacular with the fluidity of his taking part in as melodies spill from his horn in liquid phrases.
Prime-drawer taking part in and a pure class
One other customary, “Star Eyes” (co-written by Gene DePaul, creator of one other fantastic evergreen, “Teach Me Tonight”) was typically used as a car for improv by the good bebop altoist Charlie Parker. Right here, Brooks and his confreres assault the tune at a brisk tempo, with Morgan utilizing a mute on the piece’s starting and finish. After Brooks’ solo, Sonny Clark reveals why he was so extremely thought to be a pianist. Extra top-drawer taking part in comes from Lee Morgan, whose horn phrases are alternately cool and florid.
The beginning of Minor Transfer’s title monitor, a Brooks authentic, exudes a Latin really feel with its harmonized twin horns using on a syncopated Blakey groove pushed by tinkling trip cymbals and that includes Clark’s laconic piano punctuations. The music morphs right into a crisply-paced swinger pushed by Watkins’ strolling bass throughout the solo passages. Brooks pours out molten phrases, adopted by Morgan, whose declamatory strategy is sort of brash. Sonny Clark’s piano solo, in contrast, evinces a pure class because it glides over Watkins’ and Blakey’s simmering rhythms.
“Everything Happens To Me” is Minor Transfer’s solely sluggish ballad. Sonny Clark’s understated piano units the scene, laying a strong basis for Brooks’ subdued however sure-footed and smoky tenor saxophone strains. Watkins performs with each precision and financial system whereas Blakey, often famend for his bombast and energy, retains the rhythmic pulse beating quietly and unobtrusively within the background. The music ends with a stunning tenor saxophone cadenza by Brooks.
We’ll by no means actually know why Minor Transfer was left on the shelf alongside the opposite posthumously launched Brooks classes, Road Singer, Again To The Tracks, and The Ready Recreation. Fortunately for jazz followers, when Michael Cuscuna heard it, he granted the album a launch, and it was issued for the primary time by King Information in Japan, in 1980. Minor Transfer later appeared on CD for the primary time in 2000 as a part of Blue Be aware’s restricted version Connoisseur collection.
Now, many years later, the album has been lovingly mastered from Rudy Van Gelder’s authentic two-track grasp tape by Kevin Grey below the supervision of producer Joe Harley, getting a brand new lease of life by way of Blue Be aware’s acclaimed Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl collection. Its revival will show that Tina Brooks was a serious, not a minor, tenor saxophonist.
Take a look at extra Tone Poet reissues right here.
