1ngram Posted June 15, 2005 Report Share Posted June 15, 2005 I've been told a recent issue of this canadian magazine featured an article on Tina Brooks which practically accused Blue Note of purposely sabotaging Brooks' career. Has anyone seen this issue? Does anyone know which it is and whether it is readily available? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnS Posted June 16, 2005 Report Share Posted June 16, 2005 That is the gist of the article in Coda. By not issuing Brooks' work BN get the blame in Chambers article. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nate Dorward Posted June 16, 2005 Report Share Posted June 16, 2005 It's the May/June issue & readily available; Coda doesn't have a website so it can be hard to track down but PM me if you like & I'll get you in touch with them. I'm not sure who distributes it outside North America. The article contains no fresh research, simply rehashes the available sources (Cuscuna, Rosenthal &c) & throws in a lot of accusations (the title is "Who Killed Tina Brooks?"). Aside from accusing Lion & Wolff of destroying Brooks' career by not releasing his albums, it also accuses them in passing of ruining Grant Green's career too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rooster_Ties Posted June 16, 2005 Report Share Posted June 16, 2005 it also accuses them in passing of ruining Grant Green's career too. ← How so?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bertrand Posted June 16, 2005 Report Share Posted June 16, 2005 Who is the author? Jack Chambers? If anything, Downbeat was responsible by giving True Blue a crummy review. Bertrand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted June 16, 2005 Report Share Posted June 16, 2005 I ain't buying it. All that BN stuff might have slowed his career down, but, most likely, Tina's habit is what ultimately kept him down. BN did some people dirty, like Freddie Redd (according to him) & Horace Parlan (according to Ronnie Boykins, anyway), but they're still going. Tina obviously had the skills to do likewise, but skills is only half the battle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Tapscott Posted June 16, 2005 Report Share Posted June 16, 2005 I ain't buying it. All that BN stuff might have slowed his career down, but, most likely, Tina's habit is what ultimately kept him down. Most likely, indeed. It's a very mediocre article and surprisingly unreflective for someone of Chambers' reputation. I don't think he even bothered to read the liner notes of the Mosaic set. It's the kind of article that might have been written by a second year jounalism student. Blue Note would have paid for making these unreleased sessions (including Tina's leader fees, I presume). So BN would have suffered a hit, too, by leaving them in the vault. Was there a purpose behind it? Probably it was a business decision. I can only guess that the sales of "True Blue" were so low that it just didn't make economic sense to release them. I guess the thinking is that you cover your expenses on these lost sessions by releasing sessions by other musicians with more sales potential. (I believe the Mosaic notes say that the first recording was not released for musical reasons, something Chambers never mentions). Whether the release of the other sessions would have enhanced his career when the one already out there wasn't doing much is debatable. Blue Note was hardly responsible for "killing" Tina. Blame Tina himself and the dope dealers for his untimely demise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nate Dorward Posted June 16, 2005 Report Share Posted June 16, 2005 it also accuses them in passing of ruining Grant Green's career too. ← How so?? ← Same deal: Chambers accuses them of sitting on countless sessions, thus withholding money from Green, destroying his career, &c. This seems to me completely ridiculous--they released a ton of Green albums, actually. He was recording an incredible amount (I presume that the drug habit must have in part made him eager to go into the studio a lot), too much to release all at once. You can certainly argue with BN's decision about which dates to release (usually the more "commercial" ones) but they certainly put out a good-sized number of them, it was not "suppression". I don't have my copy of the mag handy at the moment (lent it to a friend) but I'm sure someone who has a copy can type in some of the relevant passages. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnS Posted June 16, 2005 Report Share Posted June 16, 2005 I thought that the reason BN recorded Green so much was to put a few bucks in his pocket. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bertrand Posted June 17, 2005 Report Share Posted June 17, 2005 Which Chambers are we talking about here? Bertrand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nate Dorward Posted June 17, 2005 Report Share Posted June 17, 2005 Jack. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnS Posted October 1, 2005 Report Share Posted October 1, 2005 As might be expected this article generated some comment from Coda readers. One interesting thing that emerged from Michael Cuscuna - that there's a tenor battle between Tina and David Newman on Ray Charles' DVD O Genio - Live In Brazil on "Birth of the Band". Apologies if this has come up elsewhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BruceH Posted October 3, 2005 Report Share Posted October 3, 2005 I ain't buying it. All that BN stuff might have slowed his career down, but, most likely, Tina's habit is what ultimately kept him down. BN did some people dirty, like Freddie Redd (according to him) & Horace Parlan (according to Ronnie Boykins, anyway), but they're still going. Tina obviously had the skills to do likewise, but skills is only half the battle. ← Grachan Moncur also made some claims of bad dealings at the hands of Blue Note. But I agree with Jim; if you want to look for who "killed" Tina Brooks, look to the drugs. He got paid for the sessions he recorded, whether or not they were released (and as someone pointed out, the decision to release or not was and is ultimately a business one.) Even if one of the tracks from True Blue had become a hit single, who can say for sure that Brooks would have lived much longer? (Perhaps the pressures of a suddenly enhanced career would have conspired to kill him sooner, though I hope not.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Nessa Posted October 3, 2005 Report Share Posted October 3, 2005 Some artists expect the world to "drop at their feet" when they make a record. It is not that simple. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nate Dorward Posted October 4, 2005 Report Share Posted October 4, 2005 All that said, has anyone actually found out why Blue Note went to the trouble of getting Brooks' later albums so close to release, then pulled them? It'd be nice to counter Chambers' sloppy insinuations with some hard facts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Gould Posted October 4, 2005 Report Share Posted October 4, 2005 All that said, has anyone actually found out why Blue Note went to the trouble of getting Brooks' later albums so close to release, then pulled them? It'd be nice to counter Chambers' sloppy insinuations with some hard facts. ← If I recall the Brooks Mosaic liners, Lion didn't recall what happened, only that it was a very busy time. I believe there were a couple of others that also slipped through the cracks back then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andybleaden Posted October 4, 2005 Report Share Posted October 4, 2005 If I recall the Brooks Mosaic liners, Lion didn't recall what happened, only that it was a very busy time. I believe there were a couple of others that also slipped through the cracks back then. ← Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andybleaden Posted October 4, 2005 Report Share Posted October 4, 2005 Here is the offending copy .....curtousy of someone else I will try to source the words next Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nate Dorward Posted October 4, 2005 Report Share Posted October 4, 2005 Well, the publication of the Chambers piece was ill-advised, but otherwise I've very much enjoyed the latest issues of Coda. But I'm probably prejudiced, having contributed two of the articles & several reviews.... The current issue by the way has a lengthy feature on Denny Zeitlin, stuff on Fred Anderson, free jazz in Beirut, avantgarde bigbands, Frank Hewitt & Smalls Records, &c. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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