Music
Roy Brooks
1938–2005 · jazz drummer, percussionist, bandleader
Detroit drummer who played on Horace Silver's Song for My Father, joined Max Roach's M'Boom, and after returning home in 1975 became a pillar and teacher of the city's jazz scene.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 67- Detroit years
- 1938–1959, 1975–2005
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Brooks grew up in Detroit drumming from childhood, his first music coming from his mother's church singing. A standout high-school basketball player, he won a scholarship to the Detroit Institute of Technology but left after three semesters to tour with Yusef Lateef. After work with Lateef, Barry Harris, Beans Bowles and the Four Tops, he joined Horace Silver from 1959 to 1964, playing on Song for My Father, and then freelanced in New York with Sonny Stitt, Lee Morgan, Dexter Gordon, Pharoah Sanders, Charles Mingus and many more. He joined Max Roach's percussion ensemble M'Boom and formed his own group, the Artistic Truth, often playing musical saw and drums tuned with tubes. Struggling with mental illness, he moved back to Detroit in 1975, where he played with Kenny Cox, Harold McKinney and Wendell Harrison, co-founded the organization M.U.S.I.C., created the Aboriginal Percussion Choir and taught children in his basement. In his last years his illness led to legal trouble and imprisonment; he died in a Detroit nursing home in 2005.
Highlights
- Drummer with Horace Silver, 1959–1964, including Song for My Father
- Album The Free Slave (1970) with Woody Shaw and Cecil McBee
- Member of Max Roach's M'Boom; leader of the Artistic Truth
- Co-founded M.U.S.I.C. in Detroit with Kenny Cox, Harold McKinney and Wendell Harrison
- Drummer on Woody Shaw's Bemsha Swing, recorded at Baker's (1986)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Recorded here · 1986
Baker's Keyboard Lounge
Detroit's oldest jazz club, where Woody Shaw's Bemsha Swing was recorded in 1986 with Brooks on drums.