Billy Brooks

★★★★ Windows Of The Mind WE WANT SOUNDS. CD/LP 1974 funk rarity from the Ray Charles protégé. From Mobile, Alabama, Julius ‘Billy’ Brooks studied trumpet at New York’s Juilliard School before moving to Los Angeles to play with Lionel Hampton and Ray Charles, the latter issuing Brooks’ sole album on his Crossover Records label in 1974. Recorded at Ray’s RPM International Studios, with Ray co-producing and a crack band including bassist Larry Gales and drummer Clarence Johnston, its nine tracks, all vehicles for Brooks’ vivacious, melodious blowing, are either swinging big band funk made for dancing, soulful grooves that lean towards acid jazz, or in the case of The Speech Maker, crime jazz full of drama and suspense. Fourty Days, Brooks’ cop show theme in waiting, meanwhile, was sampled by A Tribe Called Quest on 1990’s Luck Of Lucien, causing originals of the album to fetch three figure sums and thus making this first official reissue very welcome. Lois Wilson