Re: Roy Brooks is gone
Re: Roy Brooks is gone
Thank you, Margaret. I hadn't heard until I saw your message. Roy Brooks=20 was such an important, potent, creative, inspiring force on the Detroit=20 music scene.
I first saw Roy, the "Mystical Afronaut," with Pharaoh sanders in a church=20 basement on Detroit's east side in the late seventies. He blew my mind.
I later got a chance to play in Roy's Aboriginal Percussion Choir, which=20 was housed at the M.U.S.I.C. (Musicians United to Save Indigenous Culture)=20 Station on Grand River in Detroit. Geri Allen used to come by and play.=20 During one concert at the M.U.S.I.C. Station with the Aboriginal Percussion =
Choir and Roy's group The Artistic Truth, Roy asked me to play his drums=20 while he played the saw. Ralphe Armstrong was playing bass. I was so=20 nervous that I let the tempo drop. Ralphe leaned over to me and said, "Keep =
it up Sweetie, keep it up." It was a defining and never-to-be-forgotten=20 moment for me. Not because I let the tempo drop, but because Roy had=20 requested me to play his drums.
He would do crazy stuff, like the year at the Montreux Detroit festival=20 when he had a basketball hoop set up and a quick game was integrated into=20 his performance.
Later, I wrote an article on Roy for Modern Drummer. I spent hours=20 interviewing him in his home. At the time he joked that he was "working on=20 a new act." He said, "I'm going to bill myself as Sun Ra's son. Yeah, I'm=20 gonna call myself Son Roy."
He will be sorely missed. He was one of a kind, a true, original, creative=20 spirit. He will be sorely missed.
Bob Sweet bsweet@umich.edu author, publisher of Music Universe, Music Mind: Revisiting the Creative=20 Music Studio, Woodstock, New York http://www.arborville.com/cms/ordermumm.html
--On Thursday, November 17, 2005 2:15 PM -0500 Margaret Davis=20 musicmargaret@earthlink.net wrote:
www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=3D/20051117/NEWS08/511170574/10
Roy Brooks: Jazz musician known for wild creativity
Obituaries
November 17, 2005
BY MARK STRYKER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Roy Brooks -- one of the greatest jazz musicians produced by Detroit, but also a troubled man who fought mental illness for much of his adult life -- died Tuesday at Detroit Receiving Hospital. He was 67 and suffered from heart, lung, arthritis and circulation trouble, said his wife, Hermine Brooks.
Mr. Brooks was a ubiquitous presence in jazz in the 1960s, working or recording with some of the biggest names on the scene. His clarified swing, gutsy attack, fiery momentum and distinctive rhythmic snap made him a keynote of hard bop. He made his reputation with pianist Horace Silver's Quintet in 1959-64 and later appeared with Sonny Stitt, Yusef Lateef, Dexter Gordon, Charles Mingus and Max Roach's percussion choir M'Boom.
When he returned to Detroit in the '70s, he became a godfather on the local scene, leading diverse groups like the mainstream Artistic Truth and the exotic Aboriginal Percussion Choir. He also mentored future stars like pianist Geri Allen.
There was a wild, theatrical side to Mr. Brooks' creativity. He played = the blues on the musical saw and created a contraption with tubes to suck air in and out of a drum to vary its pitch and play melody.
"Roy could think of so many creative things to do that no one else could think of," said Louis Hayes, a contemporary from Detroit who also became = a leading drummer in modern jazz. "He would take the drums and figure how = to blow air into them and get different sounds and play the saw with a bow, and he could really swing."
But there was a tragic side to Mr. Brooks' life. He struggled with mental illness for decades, and the fallout from his bipolar disorder, including arrests for felonious assault, landed him in a Michigan prison in 2000. = He was released in 2004 and spent the rest of his life living in a Detroit nursing home.
In 2002, Mr. Brooks was the subject of a cover story in Jazz Times magazine about mental illness and jazz.
Mr. Brooks was born in Detroit. He got his gig with Silver when Hayes, = his friend from Detroit, was leaving the group and recommended the = 21-year-old Mr. Brooks. His buoyant swing and quick reflexes made him a natural for Silver's tightly organized music.
Mr. Brooks freelanced in New York for more than a decade after leaving Silver and returned to Detroit in the '70s.
Among the records that capture Mr. Brooks at his best are Silver's "Horace-Scope," Sonny Stitt's "Constellation" and Blue Mitchell's "Blue's Moods." Mr. Brooks' best record as a leader is "The Free Slave" from = 1970, whose intensity has made it a favorite among aficionados.
In addition to his wife, with whom he did not live, Mr. Brooks is = survived by sons Raheem Brooks and Richard Pinkston. The funeral will be Tuesday = at the Swanson Funeral Home, 14751 W. McNichols, Detroit. The time of the service has not been set.
Contact MARK STRYKER at 313-222-6459 or stryker@freepress.com.
Copyright =A9 2005 Detroit Free Press Inc.