Roy Brooks – Beat

180-gram vinyl

Verve By Request Series — Monthly releases from Verve Label Group's jazz catalog!

Handpicked rarities and fan favorites include out-of-print titles and first-ever vinyl pressings

Verve Records/UMe and Third Man Records have partnered to resurrect the popular reissue series, Verve By Request, with a vinyl twist. Focusing on rare gems and fan-requested jazz albums from the Verve Label Group's stable of iconic labels, the series will offer two titles per month — each hand-picked by Verve and Third Man Records. The records will include both long-out-of-print titles from the vault as well as the first-ever vinyl pressings for albums released in the '90s and aughts that were only originally released on CD.

Albums will be newly remastered from original analog sources, when available, and pressed on 180-gram at Third Man Record Pressings in Detroit. The series launches Nov. 11, 2022, with a nod to Third Man's birthplace with two of Detroit's finest: Alice Coltrane's Ptah, the El Daoud (1970) and Roy Brook's long out-of-print Beat (1964).

Recorded at Motown's legendary Hitsville USA studio for Workshop Jazz — Berry Gordy's short-lived jazz imprint — Beat marks Roy Brooks' debut as a leader and finds the innovative drummer fusing his hard bop roots with a Motor City soul-jazz groove. Brooks, who served as a sideman for Horace Silver, Yusef Lateef, and Chet Baker, among others, is joined by fellow Detroit natives George Bohannon (trombone) and Hugh Lawson (piano), along with his Horace Silver Quintet bandmates: Blue Mitchell (trumpet), Junior Cook (tenor saxophone), and Eugene Taylor (bass). Together, they deliver a high-energy set that features tracks written by Brooks, Joe Henderson, and Duke Pearson. Notably, the track "Soulsphere" was composed by Alice McLeod (erroneously credited as "McCloud" on the sleeve), who would blaze a new musical path a few years later as the incomparable Alice Coltrane. Hailed by AllMusic as "a record of uncommon scope and reach," Beat is the first official reissue of any Workshop Jazz album.