ROY BROOKS Vinilo y CD

Review: Roy Brooks was a staple of Detroit's jazz scene - a gifted drummer who worked with Chet Baker, Charles Mingus, Horace Silver and more besides. He recorded Beat for Berry Gordy's short-lived Workshop Jazz label in the Hitsville USA studio, joined by George Bohanon, Hugh Lawson, Blue Mitchell, Junior Cook and Eugene Taylor. Given the interwoven shared history of these players, Beat manifested as a cohesive fusion of hard bop and soul jazz which left a mark when it came out in 1964, and it still packs a punch in the modern era thanks to this high-grade reissue courtesy of Third Man, making this a true Motor City product.

Review: American jazz drummer Roy Brooks lit a fire under his career when he joined the Horace Silver Combo in the early 1960s; such was the foot in the door that it allowed him to join a multitude of later bands and projects of esteem, including those led by Stanley Turrentine, Yusef Lateef and Charles Mingus. Perhaps it was this early exposure to multiplicity that saw to his incredible collective magnum opus (by then having formed his own band, the Artistic Truth), Black Survival, a live album recorded in 1974 that outwardly heard Brooks' then newfangled sense of spirituality at the time, not to mention his anti-war thematic focus, overflows of emotion, and glorious monologues in favour of peace and unity. One for the spiritual jazz heads, we'd say you can hardly call yourself one if you haven't checked this one out.