Serious Fun: Roy Brooks and the Joy of The Free Slave

Roy Brooks – The Free Slave (Time Traveler Records, TT M-001, 2025 reissue)

There’s a certain magic when the drummer’s in charge. The music moves differently—more pulse-driven, more alive—as if every player is tracing the rhythm in real time. On The Free Slave, recorded live at Baltimore’s Left Bank Jazz Society on April 26, 1970, Roy Brooks leads a remarkable group—Woody Shaw on trumpet, George Coleman on tenor, Hugh Lawson on piano, and Cecil McBee on bass—through a set that’s as inventive as it is human.

Everyone walks around the mall late at night with Roy Brooks records, right? No? Just me?

Live albums can be hit or miss. Some simply document an event; others capture a night that refuses to die. The Free Slave is one of those. The Left Bank space sounds intimate, the crowd engaged, the acoustics slightly resonant. You can almost feel the tension and warmth that producer Zev Feldman later unearthed from the original tape. Brooks’ drumming is explosive yet purposeful, filled with small revelations that keep surfacing with each listen. Coleman plays with bite, Shaw burns bright, and McBee and Lawson keep the floor steady. There's plenty of musical communication to enjoy.

The title track is the album’s core—a soul-funk engine that never idles. But the set’s most curious moment arrives on “Five for Max,” where Brooks alters the pitch of his drums mid-solo by blowing air into them (breath-a-tone). It’s not a gimmick; it’s an extension of his restless search for sound. The technique joins a series of subtle gestures: shifts in stick height, ghost rolls that toy with gravity, accents that reshape time. What might read as cerebral becomes, in his hands, joyful. Jazz as play, not scholastic preaching.

The recreated Muse Records label on the Andover One with the Ortofon Silver.

I auditioned this new Time Traveler Records reissue on the Andover One system outfitted with an Ortofon Silver cart, and it was a revelation. The pressing is astonishingly quiet and balanced, with a soundstage that opens wide: horns bloom, drums breathe, and that well-worn Baltimore piano carries just enough grit to remind you this happened in a room, not a vacuum. It’s honest, alive, imperfect, and fully present.

The Time Traveler edition itself is a study in care. Mastered directly from the original analog tapes by Matt Lutthans at The Mastering Lab in Salina, Kansas, and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Optimal Media in Germany, it’s both quiet and dynamic, each nuance intact. The high-gloss Stoughton Press jacket and design by John Sellards recreate the original Muse aesthetic with affection, not nostalgia and certainly improve upon the original quality. Liner notes by Shannon J. Effinger position Brooks as both rooted and exploratory—exactly as he sounds.

The flip side of the insert features copious liner notes and acknowledgements.

It’s worth noting the small human touches too: a nod to Anne Braithwaite - an excellent jazz publicist - is tucked into the credits (publicists don't often appear in an album's liner notes). However, acknowledgments like these say a lot about this new Time Traveler venture, launched by Feldman with support from Craft Recordings and Virgin Music Group. The whole operation presents as very collaborative: music made by people who appear to clearly enjoy it, not just archive it.

Brooks understood that balance better than most. He played with intellect and abandon, with precision and joy. The Free Slave captures him at his most spontaneous and alive—a record that thinks deeply, swings freely, and, most of all, remembers that great jazz should always be a little fun.