Tina Brooks
Tina Brooks had a short-lived career during the heyday of hard bop and didn't record for the last 12 years of his life. Nonetheless, his own records and his sessions with Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Freddie Redd, Jimmy Smith, and Kenny Burrell leave the impression that he was on his way to becoming a tenor giant when he was overcome by health problems due to drug addiction. Brooks did session work with both Amos Milburn and Lionel Hampton, but the key to his own artistry is on the Blue Note label. He led only four sessions as a leader for Blue Note from 1958 through 1961 -- during his lifetime. The first two, Minor Move and True Blue, define the weighty edge in Brooks' playing and his plethora of improvisational ideas that extended the blues framework he operated out of beyond what most players were doing at the time. His reliance on minor-key signatures and open-ended harmonic figures were much-envied trademarks among his peers. Also on Blue Note is his work with McLean and Redd, both of whom played on his recordings. Perhaps Brooks' most seminal moment as an improviser, though, was on Redd's score for Jack Gelber's Beat play The Connection, performed by the Living Theater, where the musicians played themselves as characters and drug addicts, which was close to, if not spot on, the actual truth. Here he and McLean turned the hard bop blues into an aggressive, deeply emotional wail of truth and beauty winding around each other in short bursts and long lines as Redd turned the intervals inside out for the pair to blow. Brooks work on McLean's Street Singer and Jackie's Bag in 1959 and 1960 as well as Shades of Redd are stunning also.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo
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Minor Move (Expanded Edition)
Jazz - Released by Blue Note Records on 16 Mar 1958
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Back To The Tracks
Jazz - Released by Blue Note Records on 27 Jan 1998
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Waiting Game (Remastered 1999)
Jazz - Released by Blue Note Records on 1 Jan 1999
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Complete Tina Brooks Quintet Master Takes
Jazz - Released by Jazz Lovers on 1 Jan 1985
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Street Singer
Jazz - Released by Blue Note Records on 2 Oct 1960
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Blue Lights (feat. Tina Brooks & Art Blakey) [Bonus Track Version]
Jazz - Released by Jazz Lovers on 6 May 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
King of the Hard Bop (Remastered)
Miscellaneous - Released by Master Tape Records on 8 Oct 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Very Best of Tina Brooks
Jazz - Released by Classic Music International on 9 Nov 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Golden Hits
Pop - Released by Platin Classics Music on 4 Dec 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Crowns Collection
Jazz - Released by cr & ti masters on 14 Feb 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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Street Singer
Jazz - Released by Black & Partner Licenses LLC on 25 Aug 2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
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