Hello from New Orleans Updated!

I have been in New Orleans for the last few days, drinking beer and eating Cajun and listening to lectures on the Second Amendment.  In between all this serious activity, I managed to visit one of my favorite music places, the Louisiana Music Factory, on Decatur Street in The Quarter.  It still has one of the most inviting jazz sections available.

I picked up (finally) Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers, Intuition by Lennie Tristano and Warne Marsh, Kenny Dorham Una Mass (with Joe Henderson, Herbie Hancock, Butch Warren, and Anthony Williams), and last but not least, True Blue by Tina Brooks.  I'll try to post a sample or two when I get home this week.

Until now, here is a beautiful picture.  If you cut me out of it.

Update!  I blogged about Harold Floyd (Tina) Brooks back in April.  Doesn't it sound like I know what I am doing when I call him by his real name.  Kinda like when a jazzman leaves out the "King" between Nat and Cole.  In fact, I know very little beyond what is in that post.  But I did obtain Brooks' wonderful Minor Move just about the time I began my (semi) serious collecting. 

True Blue is almost as good.  The late Freddie Hubbard plays trumpet, Duke Jordan piano, Sam Jones bass, and Art Taylor drums.  It is a fine piece of hard bop.  Listening to it is a lot like watching the DVD set of Firefly.  Its great but bittersweet, as I know the series will end prematurely.  Here is a sample, an alternative version of the first cut.

Good Old Soul

And here is a cut from the Dorham album mentioned above.

Sao Paolo

Tina Brooks

Another shooting star in the Jazz sky. Harold Floyd (Tina) Brooks (pronounced sure enough Teena), killed himself off pretty quick. But before the narcotics brought the curtain down, he managed to produce some awesome jazz. I have been enjoying Minor Move for some time now. There is something about Tina's tenor that is unusual, and I can't quite pin it down. He presents that beautiful and sad face of someone who is trying to catch something. But it's more than that. Maybe you can figure it out.

Minor Move was a piece of genius. Recorded in Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack, about nine months after I was born, it was right at the temporal epicenter of modern jazz. Lee Morgan, another tragedy in the making, played trumpet. Sonny Clark played the piano, and Doug Watkins was on bass. Art Blakey played drums, putting the signature on the vintage.

Here, for a sample, is the title cut:

Tina Brooks/Minor Move/Minor Move