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From the nineteen-fifties through the seventies, the jazz drummer Roy Brooks performed with some of the major musicians of the time, such as Charles Mingus and Dexter Gordon, and led some talented groups of his own. But as he was making a name for himself as a leader, in the seventies, his career was interrupted by mental illness; he died in 2005, at the age of sixty-seven. Today, heâs among the great jazz musicians whose enormous artistry stands in unfortunate contrast to their relative obscurity. The release, last week, of âUnderstandingââa two-CD set of a live recording, from 1970, of a quintet led by Brooks, which is also available on vinyl and digital streamâshould suffice to establish him as one of the most original jazz performers of the era.