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Who Killed Tina Brooks


CJ Shearn

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http://chass.utoronto.ca/~chambers/tinabrooks.html apologies if this has been posted before, but this article is very interesting. The author seems to suggest that the majority of Brooks' albums being unreleased at the time was b/c of his addiction and Blue Note knew that so they kept the albums shelved. I don't buy that, b/c Hank had an addiction, and they released his stuff, not only that but the groups on Brooks' records are impressive. Something about Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff not caring about Brooks seems kind of strange to me. Edited by CJ Shearn
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I put this in the wrong, oops. I just read the other thread. Really, a whole lot of theories in the article are BS. I mean, when did Alfred or Frank ever sabotage talent? I can't think of any instances. edit: I guess Freddie Redd and Grachan Moncur according to Jim Sangrey.

Edited by CJ Shearn
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I can't think of any instances. edit: I guess Freddie Redd and Grachan Moncur according to Jim Sangrey.

Not literally according to me, just according to my recounts of things that the two men in question have said, same as with the Boykin/Parlan story above, which, if memory serves, can be found in an old Coda magazine.

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wow CODA ssems to have issued a lot of dirt. Not surprising Scott Yanow writes for them, given his penchant for dismissals of many sessions and musicians.

Haven't seen too many articles or reviews by Yanow in recent editions of Coda. My appraisal of his work is quite the opposite. I tend to think he's too superficially un-critical.

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Marathon runners have no time to take in the scenery. That also applies to a writer bent on writing and hearing it all. If you ask the runner to describe sights along his/her route, the response you get will be just as satisfactory as a Yanow review.

I was not aware of his contributions to CODA. I hope that problem has been resolved. :)

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It's easy in our ardor for the music to overlook the fact that these two guys were running a business. That being the case and as much as we'd like to think otherwise, it wasn't always about the music. They had a bottom line to attend to and while in retrospect, some of their decisions may seem to be short sighted or even biased, I'm sure they were making their calls in the context of what was best for their business. Does anyone really think that they would have sat on Tina Brooks' unreleased sessions if they thought they would sell well enough to justify their release? The fact that "True Blue" didn't do much probably justified their decision, at least in their minds, and that's all that really counts. Sure, we'd all like it if things had turned out differently and Brooks had been as prolific as a Hank Mobley or a Freddie Hubbard, but it wasn't to be. Bottom line, I think it's a mistake for anyone to draw conclusions fifty years after the fact especially when it involves decisions and justification for those decisions that we no way of knowing much about.

Up over and out.

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Yanow was doing some reviewing for the magazine under Daryl Angier's editorship. I haven't seen the most recent issue or two--I no longer contribute to it, though I did send in a year-end top-ten anyway--but my recollection was that Yanow hadn't been seen in its pages for a while. Ken Dryden, Ken Waxman, & Kurt Gottschalk seemed to be some of the main contributors.

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He killed Bird, didn't he?

I hear he shot J.R. too.

Monterose?

Yes.

And it has never been possible to establish exactly where he was when Wardell's body was found in the desert. And who pushed Brew down those stairs? And who secretly put the bullets in the gun Maini had seen empty the day before? Someone didn't like saxophonists, I'd say.

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Guest Bill Barton

Yanow was doing some reviewing for the magazine under Daryl Angier's editorship. I haven't seen the most recent issue or two--I no longer contribute to it, though I did send in a year-end top-ten anyway--but my recollection was that Yanow hadn't been seen in its pages for a while. Ken Dryden, Ken Waxman, & Kurt Gottschalk seemed to be some of the main contributors.

Yes, it's been awhile since his byline has appeared.

Kbill

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  • 8 years later...

I'm late to the party, just read this article, and a dozen years later it's still a p.o.s. 

All conjecture, no facts, no journalism. He didn't bother interviewing any of Tina's siblings. Some, perhaps, are still living. Eight of them should've produced a few children of their own, who knew uncle Tina full well. 

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