You could assemble a very good jazz library from live recordings alone, and this 1970 date at Baltimore’s Left Bank Society is an essential addition to anyone’s cherished hard bop meets soul jazz collection. Drummer Roy Brooks, an important but neglected figure who died in 2005 after a number of tragic struggles with mental health, came out of Detroit with Yusuf Lateef, establishing himself in New York where he played with a Who’s Who of contemporary jazz. He later joined Max Roach’s M’Boom and championed the use of indigenous instruments with the Aboriginal Percussion Choir, which he founded.
The band for this Baltimore club venue, which he chose for the warmth of its audience, is state of the art: Woody Shaw on trumpet, George Coleman on tenor, Hugh Lawson on piano and Cecil McBee on bass, the latter two having played alongside Brooks with Yusuf Lateef. While the music can be structurally quite complex it never loses a sense of swing and momentum, powered by Brooks himself whose drumming is quite extraordinarily propulsive, and as polyrhythmic as Tony Williams at his best. On the penultimate track, a McBee composition called “Will Pan’s Walk”, Brooks also plays an instrument of his own invention, the Breath-a-Tone, a Heath Robinson-sounding contraption that allows him change the pitch of the drums by blowing air into them from two Walrus tusk-like tubes in his mouth.
The superb vinyl remastering for this Craft Recordings reissue places Brooks – who produced the original album – at the very front and centre of the sound, and you can hear his snapping rimshots and splashing cymbal-work reflecting from every surface of the reverberant club. His big solo on the final track, Five for Max, dedicated to Max Roach, is continually engaging, and doesn’t outstay its welcome. Other standouts include the opening title track, written by Brooks, who sets up a ferocious boogaloo beat, and Horace Silver’s Understanding, which closes Side A. Roy Brooks played with Silver on his most celebrated album, Song for My Father.
The front line of Coleman and Shaw is world class, with Shaw – who was a Muse Records regular – in particular blowing up a storm. But it’s all good, and as live and dangerous-sounding as hard-swinging jazz in a club should be.
Released 17 October 2025
