Clifford Brown

Clifford Brown stands among the supreme trumpeters in jazz history, and the automobile accident that ended his life at age 25 delivered one of the music’s most grievous blows. Even so, the artist known affectionately as “Brownie” produced a body of recordings whose authority and beauty continue to shape players many decades later. Complete mastery of the trumpet came naturally to Brown, who combined a rich, full-bodied tone with an uncommonly deep command of bebop harmony. Inspired by idol Fats Navarro, he rose quickly among the leading brass players of his generation and took his place beside such giants as Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. After early associations with Tadd Dameron and Art Blakey, Brown secured his lasting position in jazz by forming the celebrated quintet with drummer Max Roach and documenting its achievements on the classic albums Clifford Brown & Max Roach, Brown and Roach Incorporated, and Study in Brown, each of which helped establish the hard bop language of the late 1950s. That he was still advancing as an artist when he died in 1956 remains difficult to accept.

Born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1930, Brown developed an early passion for music and sang in a family vocal ensemble with his three brothers. At thirteen he began studying trumpet at school and received private instruction from the respected Delaware trumpeter and educator Robert “Boysie” Lowery. Local jazz engagements soon followed, and by 1948 Brown was performing regularly in the Philadelphia area, where he received encouragement from and occasionally sat in with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. He entered Delaware State College as a mathematics major, then transferred in 1949 to Maryland State College on a music scholarship that allowed him to study composition and arranging. During these years he encountered two pivotal figures—drummer Max Roach and trumpeter Fats Navarro—the latter of whom became a decisive influence on his own playing.

A severe car accident in June 1950 sidelined Brown and halted his performances; one month later, Navarro died of a drug overdose. Brown recovered from his injuries and resumed playing in 1952 as a member of Chris Powell’s R&B group the Blue Flames. The next year he joined pianist Tadd Dameron’s ensemble and traveled to Europe with Lionel Hampton’s Orchestra. While abroad he disregarded Hampton’s prohibition against recording and led several sessions with alto saxophonist Gigi Gryce. Back in the United States he made his Blue Note debut with the 1953 album A New Star on the Horizon. Cut shortly before his European departure, the date featured Gryce, tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse, pianist John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, bassist Percy Heath, and drummer Art Blakey. Additional sessions included a 1954 live recording at Birdland with a proto-Jazz Messengers quintet co-led by Blakey.

By mid-1954 Brown had formed a quintet with drummer Max Roach. Widely regarded as one of the era’s premier hard bop groups, the band also included tenor saxophonist Harold Land, pianist Richie Powell, and bassist George Morrow. Their first recording, Brown and Roach Incorporated, appeared in 1954 and was followed months later by Clifford Brown and Max Roach. In 1955 Brown issued two further landmark albums: the string-accompanied ballad session Clifford Brown with Strings and the third collaboration with Roach, Study in Brown. A fourth Brown-and-Roach release, At Basin Street, came out in 1956 with Sonny Rollins replacing Land.

In June 1956, Brown, Richie Powell, and Powell’s wife Nancy perished in a car accident while traveling to Chicago after a Philadelphia jam session. Brown, then twenty-five, was buried in Mt. Zion Cemetery in Wilmington, Delaware. Numerous posthumous releases kept his legacy before the public, among them two Memorial Albums and the 1973 collection The Beginning and the End, which contained his early Blue Flames material and a remarkable recording of that final Philadelphia jam session. A filmed appearance performing two numbers on comedian Soupy Sales’ 1955 variety show—lost for forty years—was later discovered and remains the only known moving image of the trumpeter. Comprehensive box sets issued by Mosaic have gathered his work for EmArcy, Blue Note, and Pacific Jazz. Already by the late 1950s Brown had become a primary influence on the succeeding generation of trumpeters, and players such as Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, and Charles Tolliver built directly upon his example. Successive generations continue to regard him as a model of jazz excellence.