Review Summary: To blue or not to blue.
Reading about blue notes and their meaning in jazz reminded me why I never got to study music in the first place. Trusting every aural stimulus to the interaction between my ears and my withering brain have rarely failed me, and when it comes to styles that are so foreign to me and technically rich like jazz, I must rely solely on that information, with total disregard (and not by choice) of the theoretical and technical aspects of the recording in question.
True Blue, in that sense, is a record that feels “easy to get”.
In 1960, jazz had gone through a severe phase of transformation and evolution, thanks mainly to the likes of Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Art Blakey and Dave Brubeck among others. John Coltrane had dropped
Giant Steps, Mingus was on his way to make one of the greatest jazz albums of all time and Coleman was about to set the whole genre free. In a more modest way, horn players like Tina Brooks and Freddie Hubbard were maybe not the spearheads of change, but together they were about what I consider are two of the most accessible jazz albums I’ve heard in my short stint with the genre, one of them being Tina Brooks first ever recording for the Blue Note label in 1960.
True Blue is sadly the only record Brooks himself saw released during his lifetime, as his battle against heroin addiction would be lost in 1974, and his recordings would end abruptly the year after the release of this first album. The rest of his recordings wouldn’t be published until years after his death, during the 80s. Still, Brooks’ strengths as both a composer and a sax player have been praised widely, and his premature inability to perform and his subsequent death years later is one of the tragedies that plagued the world of jazz during the 60s.
This recording, which features a total of six tracks with five being written by Brooks and all of them being engineered by the Blue Note maestro himself, Rudy Van Gelder, are like I said above, a great introduction to the genre maybe due to the lack of complex structures and the pleasant and very melodic nature of every track’s main melody. Brooks had quite the line-up for this session, with everyone except Hubbard being very young but very requested musicians from the Blue Note label. Hyper-busy drummer Art Taylor provides a steady and occasionally daring beat across the six tracks of
True Blue. Sam Jones, who I only knew prior to this for his works with Abbey Lincoln and Donald Byrd around that time, follows in toe with a great performance on bass. Duke Jordan on piano does nothing spectacular, but I particularly love his playing in “Theme For Doris” and the whole latin vibe of that track. Hubbard and Brooks are a terrific duo and there is a palpable chemistry between the two players, especially during the joint melody and harmonic passages. Their collaboration worked so well that they would double up on Hubbard’s debut for Blue Note, “Open Sesame”, which also features some of the musicians for this session and Brooks’ compositions once again.
The immense title track, the hard bop of “Up Tight’s Creek” and the sticky verse of the opening number “Good Old Soul” are some of my favorite moments of this album, but this is a solid, bluesy and refreshing record from start to finish that is also the source of many a headache for vinyl collectors looking to get their hands on an original copy, because prices are just stratospheric so if you happen to have one in your basement be sure to treat it with love. On the other hand, Blue Note just happened to reissue it last year and I managed to grab a copy and honestly, it sounds as good as my ears and withered brain can decipher so I’m more than happy with the purchase.
Tina Brooks may not have lived to see his work getting the appreciation it deserved during his time, but I want to believe he would be happy to know that it served someone like me to step into a genre that often feels quite daunting and unwelcoming for many. If that was ever his intention, I will never know, but that’s one success that no one or nothing will be able to take away from him.
