Tina Brooks: Minor Move (Tone Poet series) [BLUE NOTE]

Why you'll love it

This Tone Poet edition was mastered by Kevin Gray from Rudy Van Gelder's original tape, produced by Joe Harley, pressed on 180g vinyl at RTI and housed in a deluxe gatefold. The music is Brooks's first date as a leader, with a dream rhythm section behind him.

This edition

• Tone Poet series
• 180g vinyl
• All-analogue mastering by Kevin Gray
• Gatefold jacket
• Pressed at RTI
• Stereo mix

About the album

Some of the best Blue Note records spent years sitting on a shelf in the vault. Harold "Tina" Brooks, a tenor player from North Carolina, first recorded for the label as a sideman with organist Jimmy Smith in March 1958, and Alfred Lion was impressed enough to give him his own session that same month, on March 16 at Van Gelder's Hackensack studio. Nobody really knows why it then stayed in the can, until producer Michael Cuscuna found the masters in the late 1970s and it finally came out in Japan in 1980.

Lion put a cracking band together. Lee Morgan, still a teenager, is on trumpet, Sonny Clark on piano, Doug Watkins on bass and Art Blakey on drums. "Nutville" opens with a Brooks original that's sometimes credited to Morgan, though Curtis Fuller confirmed it was Brooks's tune. "The Way You Look Tonight" stretches past ten minutes, "Star Eyes" glides, the title track is a tough little minor-key blowing vehicle, and "Everything Happens to Me" shows off Brooks's dark, soulful ballad tone.

Brooks went on to lead True Blue in 1960, and record hunters have prized his records ever since. It took twenty-two years for anyone outside the studio to hear this one, so a few more minutes to read the gatefold won't hurt.

Also at Kops: more Tina Brooks on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Blue Note (cat# B0030487-01), a reissue of the 1958 album.