Clifford Benjamin Brown (October 30, 1930 – June 26, 1956) was an American jazz trumpeter, pianist, and composer. He died at the age of 25 in a car crash, leaving behind four years' worth of recordings. His compositions "Sandu", "Joy Spring", and "Daahoud" have become jazz standards. Brown won the DownBeat magazine Critics' Poll for New Star of the Year in 1954; he was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1972.

His trips to Philadelphia grew in frequency after he graduated from high school. Brown briefly attended Delaware State University as a math major before he switched to Maryland State College. He played in the fourteen-piece, jazz-oriented Maryland State Band. In June 1950, he was injured in a car crash after a performance. While in the hospital, he was visited by Dizzy Gillespie, who encouraged him to pursue a career in music. For a time, injuries restricted him to playing the piano.

Just before the formation of the Clifford Brown / Max Roach Quintet, journalist Nat Hentoff and Brown interviewed for a DownBeat article titled "Clifford Brown – the New Dizzy". Roach and Brown formed the joint Clifford Brown / Max Roach Quintet in the mid-1950s including tenor saxophonist Harold Land, pianist Richie Powell, and bassist George Morrow, with tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins taking Land's place in 1955. Prior to their first outing, the 1954 Pasadena Auditorium Concert, Roach included Brown on the basis that the two would be co-leaders.

As the band was still deciding on its personnel, Brown and Roach met alto player and multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy, who had his own apartment where he hosted jam sessions. Among the jam sessions' musicians were future quintet members Harold Land and George Morrow. Richie Powell (brother to Bud) arrived in the L.A. area around this time and was recruited as the quintet's pianist. The band accepted recording session offers and Brown composed several tunes that were adopted by the new quintet. Meanwhile, a larger, fully arranged band was organized for one of the upcoming recording sessions by Jack Montrose of Pacific Coast Jazz Records.

An early session of the Brown/Roach Quintet, Clifford Brown & Max Roach, featured the new lineup performing several of Brown's latest compositions. Samuelson referred to the album as a "nice gamut between boplicity and pleasant balladry."

Brown also recorded albums outside the quintet, including the Pacific Coast Jazz session and two albums with jazz vocalist Dinah Washington. Both were recorded from a jam session setting and featured other jazz trumpeters, including Maynard Ferguson and Clark Terry. Following the Dinah Washington recordings, Brown slowed the pace of his recordings and returned to the East Coast, recording an album with Sarah Vaughan in December 1954.

Personal life

In June 1954, Brown married Emma LaRue Anderson (1933–2005), whom he called "Joy Spring". The two had been introduced by Max Roach. Clifford and Anderson celebrated their marriage vows three times, partly because their families were on opposite coasts and partly because of their different religious denominations – Brown was Methodist and Anderson was Catholic. They were first married in a private ceremony June 26, 1954, in Los Angeles (on Anderson's st birthday). They again celebrated their marriage in a religious setting on July 16, 1954, with the certificate being registered in Los Angeles County. A reception was held at the Tiffany Club where the Art Pepper / Jack Montrose Quintet had been replaced, a few days earlier, by the Red Norvo Trio with Tal Farlow and Red Mitchell. Anderson's parish priest followed them to Boston where, on August 1, 1954, they performed their marriage ceremony at Saint Richards Church in the Roxbury neighborhood.

In 1955, Clifford and Anderson had a son, Clifford Brown Jr., who became a jazz broadcaster and educator.

Brown stayed away from drugs and was not fond of alcohol. Brown's enthusiasm for practicing the trumpet was noted by Lou Donaldson, who said Clifford would "do lip exercises and mouth exercises all day." Brown is buried in Mount Zion Cemetery, in Wilmington, Delaware.

Legacy

thumb|200x200px|A mural of Clifford Brown

Jazz historian Ira Gitler said of Brown, "l'm sorry I never got to know him better. Not that it necessarily follows that one who plays that beautifully is also a marvelous person, but I think one can discern in Clifford Brown's case that the particular kind of extraordinary playing was linked to an equally special human being ... Photographs of Clifford Brown reveal some of that inner self; the shots in which he is depicted in a playing attitude show his intensity, that utter concentration and total connection with his instrument."

In the 1990s, video from the TV program Soupy's On (starring comedian Soupy Sales, who was a big jazz fan and booked several top musical stars for his show) was discovered of Clifford Brown playing two tunes. This is the only video recording known to exist of Brown. Brown's grandson, Clifford Benjamin Brown III ( 1982), plays trumpet on one of the tracks, "Sandu".

Benny Golson composed "I Remember Clifford" in 1957 as a tribute to Brown, to which Jon Hendricks added lyrics. Dizzy Gillespie, Art Farmer, Bud Powell, Art Blakey, and Golson himself used the song to pay tribute throughout subsequent years. Arturo Sandoval dedicated an album, I Remember Clifford, to Brown in 1992.

Discography

As leader/co-leader

  • 1953: New Faces, New Sounds with Lou Donaldson (Blue Note, 1953)[10 inch]
  • 1953: New Star on the Horizon (Blue Note, 1953)[10 inch]
  • 1953: Clifford Brown and Art Farmer with The Swedish All Stars with Art Farmer (Prestige, 1954)[10 inch]
  • <!--August -->1954: Clifford Brown & Max Roach (EmArcy, 1954)[10 inch]
  • <!--August -->1954: Brown and Roach Incorporated (EmArcy, 1955)
  • <!--August -->1954: Clifford Brown All Stars (EmArcy, 1956)
  • <!--August -->1954: Best Coast Jazz (EmArcy, 1956)
  • <!--August -->1954: Jam Session with Clark Terry and Maynard Ferguson (EmArcy, 1954) – live
  • <!--January -->1955: Clifford Brown with Strings (EmArcy, 1955)
  • <!--February -->1955: Study in Brown (EmArcy, 1955)
  • 1956: Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street (EmArcy, 1956)

Posthumous releases

  • Memorial Album (Blue Note, 1956) – LP version of New Faces, New Sounds plus New Star on the Horizon
  • Memorial (Prestige, 1956) – LP version of Clifford Brown and Art Farmer with The Swedish All Stars<br />plus A Study In Dameronia
  • Jazz Immortal featuring Zoot Sims (Pacific Jazz, 1960)
  • The Clifford Brown Sextet In Paris (Prestige, 1970) – recorded <!--on September 29 and October 8, -->in 1953
  • The Beginning And The End (Columbia, 1973) – compilation
  • Raw Genius - Live at Bee Hive Chicago 1955 Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 with Max Roach (Victor, 1977) – live recorded in 1955. Japan only.<br />Also released as Live at The Bee Hive (Columbia, 1979)[2LP]
  • Pure Genius (Volume One) with Max Roach (Elektra Musician, 1982) – live recorded in 1956
  • More Study in Brown (EmArcy, 1983)
  • Jams 2 (EmArcy, 1983) – recorded in 1954
  • Alternate Takes (Blue Note, 1984) – recorded in 1953

Box set

  • The Complete Blue Note and Pacific Jazz Recordings of Clifford Brown (Mosaic Records, 1984)[5LP]
  • Brownie: The Complete EmArcy Recordings of Clifford Brown (EmArcy / Nippon Phonographic, 1989)[10CD]

As sideman

  • Art Blakey, Live Messengers (Blue Note, 1978)
  • J. J. Johnson, Jay Jay Johnson with Clifford Brown (Blue Note, 1953), reissued as The Eminent Jay Jay Johnson Volume 1
  • Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, A Night at Birdland Vol. 1 (Blue Note, 1954)
  • Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, A Night at Birdland Vol. 2 (Blue Note, 1954)
  • Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, A Night at Birdland Vol. 3 (Blue Note, 1954)
  • Tadd Dameron, A Study In Dameronia (Prestige, 1953) [10 inch]
  • Helen Merrill, Helen Merrill (EmArcy, 1955) – recorded in 1954
  • Sonny Rollins, Sonny Rollins Plus 4 (Prestige, 1956) (also issued in Brown's name as Three Giants)
  • Sarah Vaughan, Sarah Vaughan (EmArcy, 1955) – recorded in 1954
  • Dinah Washington, Dinah Jams (EmArcy, 1955) – live recorded in 1954

Filmography

: 1988: Let's Get Lost – "Joy Spring" and "Daahoud"

References

Bibliography

  • Nick Catalano, Clifford Brown: The Life and Art of the Legendary Jazz Trumpeter (Oxford University Press, 2001),
  • "50 Years Later, Unmuted Awe for Clifford Brown"