True Blue Tina Brooks

• 1 Good Old Soul 08:05
• 2 Up Tight's Creek 05:17
• 3 Theme For Doris 05:50
• 4 True Blue 04:57
• 5 Miss Hazel 05:31
• 6 Nothing Ever Changes My Love For You 07:52
• Total Runtime 37:32

Info for True Blue

Tina Brooks' star burned with intense brightness before disappearing in the same tragic manner of too many other bop players of the time. Many jazz fans missed Tina Brooks' recordings, the best of which were extraordinary by any measure. A soulful hard bop tenor-saxophonist with a sound of his own, Brooks (1932-74) had a brief life. Most of his better known recordings as a leader and sideman took place during a four year period from 1958-61. Unsung at the time, Brooks is now considered a true giant of the art. Brooks' passionate and full sound and forward-looking style, along with his exceptional compositional gifts, combined to make him a powerful force. True Blue has become one of the most sought-after Blue Notes of all time. True Blue, along with the album Back To The Tracks, contains most of Tina Brooks finest moments on record. Recorded in June of 1960, True Blue showcases Brooks along with the young firebrand trumpeter Freddie Hubbard in a set of highly inventive originals. Driven by an all-star rhythm section, True Blue is exhibit No. 1 for proof of Tina Brooks' majestic sound and soulful writing prowess. For many aficionados of the Blue Note label, Tina Brooks' True Blue is the very essence of the Blue Note sound and feel.

„It is heartening to see an artist as obscure as tenor saxophonist Tina Brooks given the Rudy Van Gelder Edition treatment by Blue Note in this winning reissue. I have to admit surprise that Blue Note didn't marginalize Brooks, like Sam Rivers, in the label's limited-edition Connoisseur series. Frankly, Rivers is the more sophisticated artist with a potentially broader audience in my judgement, but Brooks has his lasting value also.

There is a terrifically pensive blues cry in every Brooks solo on this release that is mesmerizing. While he's often shadowed by trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, the two gracefully bring out some profoundly thoughtful improvising from each other. None of the five tunes (and two alternative takes) are exactly inspiring tunes. But Brooks packs a lot of raw emotionality and innovative musical craft into his solos. Although the liner notes makes much of the Sonny Rollins influence, I actually hear a lot more of a tone I'd connect to Booker Erwin, Ornette Coleman, or Brooks' companion in the Blue Note recording studio, Jackie McLean. Anyone who enjoyed the dramatic support Brooks gave McLean on Jackie's Bag should treasure this, the only album Brooks released under his name as leader during his lifetime. Brooks sounds like a desperately driven musician wanting something beyond the bop of 1960 and never quite making the breakthrough to freedom that McLean found through his association with Ornette Coleman. The rhythm section of drummer Art Taylor, bassist Sam Jones, and pianist Duke Jordan simply never push him that hard to explore new musical territory. I wonder who Brooks would have become had he worked with a drummer like Eddie Blackwell or Elvin Jones.

What True Blue gives generously is a full blooded musical portrait of a hard-working and distinctive sounding tenor man with a blue cry stuck in his throat and heart. It is an achievement to treasure.“ (Norman Weinstein, AllAboutJazz)

Tina Brooks, tenor saxophone
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet
Duke Jordan, piano
Sam Jones, bass
Art Taylor, drums

Recorded on June 25, 1960 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Engineered by Rudy Van Gelder
Produced by Alfred Lion

Digitally remastered

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, source Blue Note))

This album contains no booklet.