Clifford Brown Remembered by Gordon Jack

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Gordon Jack is a frequent contributor to the Jazz Journal and a very generous friend in allowing JazzProfiles to re-publish his discerning and well-researched writings on various topics about Jazz and its makers.

Gordon is the author of Fifties Jazz Talk An Oral Retrospective and he also developed the Gerry Mulligan discography in Raymond Horricks’ book Gerry Mulligan’s Ark.

The following article was published in the April 7, 15 and 21, 2021 editions of Jazz Journal. 

For more information and subscriptions please visit www.jazzjournal.co.uk

© -Gordon Jack/JazzJournal, copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with the author’s permission.

“When Dizzy Gillespie heard that Clifford Brown had been killed in a 1956 car accident his shocked reaction became an emotional epitaph, “Jazz was dealt a lethal blow by the death of Clifford Brown…there can be no replacement for his artistry”. At the age of 25 he had become not only one of the finest of all post-war jazz trumpeters but also the co-leader with Max Roach of a quintet that was hugely influential on the emerging hard bop school.

He was born in Wilmington, Delaware on 30 October 1930 into a very close family of eight children who were all encouraged musically by their father. He kept a selection of instruments around the house and when Clifford was about twelve he asked to play the trumpet apparently taking to it “Like a fish to water”. Around this time the family listened to the popular bands of the day on the radio like Lionel Hampton, Jimmie Lunceford and Fletcher Henderson. He benefited from lessons with the celebrated Robert Lowery whose other students over the years included Ernie Watts, Lem Winchester and Marcus Belgrave. A private recording of Brownie playing Ornithology in a duet with his teacher around 1949/1950 has survived representing his earliest recorded solo.  “He really knew what he wanted to do…all he needed was the right person and I think I was the one at the time” Lowery told Phil Schaap.

He was already aware of polytonality and Lowery encouraged him to learn the piano, an instrument he eventually became very proficient on. Precociously talented at just about everything he began a life-long love of chess in his mid-teens. He also excelled at pool and table-tennis. When he was fifteen he attended Howard High School where he fell under the guidance of Harry Andrews who taught him from the famous Arban Method for Trumpet. Clifford played in the High School band there marching on the field before football games and also at parades in Wilmington. 

In 1948 he matriculated at Delaware State College where he was known as “The Brain” (maths was his major). In the late forties he started visiting jazz clubs in Philadelphia which is where he met Red Rodney who told Mark Gardener, “I saw great promise in him when he was fifteen or sixteen years old. Even then he sounded very much like Fats”. Navarro was certainly an early influence and although there was a seven year difference in their ages they became close friends. Dizzy Gillespie of course was very important too as was Harry James. In 1956 though when Leonard Feather published a poll for musicians to nominate their favourites Brownie voted for one name on trumpet – Dizzy Gillespie. Billy Root was someone else who was very impressed with the young trumpeter and a few years before he died in Las Vegas he told me, “I often played with Clifford and I loved him. I never met a nicer person. He was just superb in every way and after Dizzy he was my favourite. He came in one night when Bird was at the Blue Note and Charlie got him up on the bandstand. Brownie was hiding behind the big upright piano and Bird said ‘Come out front with me man, I don’t want you back there’”. In those early years in Philadelphia he also got to play with John Coles, Benny Golson and Miles Davis at local Elk Lodges. 

In 1949 Dizzy Gillespie brought his exciting big band to Wilmington for a booking at the Odd Fellows Temple which of course was packed with enthusiasts. Just before curtain-up it became known that Benny Harris could not be found. Robert Lowery who was in the audience informed Gillespie that there was a ready-made replacement in the house. Clifford joined the trumpet section for the night and the leader was so impressed he gave him the solo on I Can’t Get Started. A year later while travelling to a booking he was involved in a serious car crash. The driver and his girl-friend were killed and Clifford was critically injured.  Bones were broken in both legs and the right side of his torso needed a full body cast to reset his frame. He spent several months in hospital and one of his visitors was Dizzy Gillespie. It was a year before he recovered and while hospitalised he received the shocking news that his friend Fats Navarro had died from TB and drug abuse. During a long convalescence he slowly rebuilt his embouchure while doing some local work on piano. According to Ken Vail’s Bird’s Diary, Charlie Parker was booked at the Club Harlem in Philadelphia in May 1951 when Benny Harris once again was missing in action. Brownie got a call from a friend and took over during Bird’s residency. The following week Harris re-joined the group for Parker’s gig in Buffalo, New York.  In November that year fellow Philadelphian Jimmy Heath invited Clifford to join a quintet he had formed with Dolo Coker, Sugie Rhodes, and Philly Joe Jones for a job at Spider Kelly’s. On one occasion the tenor-man remembered a very drunk woman coming up to the bandstand and saying to the trumpeter, “I don’t know what you’re playin’ but you’re playin’ the hell out of it!”

Late in 1951 Brown was in the audience when Chris Powell and the Blue Flames appeared at a Philadelphia dance venue. He was invited to sit-in and impressed the leader so much that he was asked to join the band on a permanent basis. Powell had a popular rhythm & blues band and he often featured jazz musicians like Osie Johnson, Jymie Merritt, Jimmy Heath, Jimmy Crawford, Buster Crawford and Philly Joe Jones. Clifford recorded his first commercially released solos on two calypsos with the band in Chicago in March 1952. Ida Red (dedicated to his current girl-friend) finds him in a cup mute and I Come From Jamaica has a confident open statement displaying exemplary control of the upper register. 

 

In 1953 he left the Blue Flames to try his luck in New York and in June that year he was selected for a Lou Donaldson Blue Note date. Clifford brought his own Brownie Speaks to the session and his three choruses on this up-tempo original feature some very well-articulated eighth note passages. Two days later he was in the studios again, this time for a Tadd Dameron nonet session for Prestige. The line-up included Idrees Sullieman, Benny Golson, Gigi Gryce and Philly Joe Jones. Philly JJ (based on Woody’n You) is essentially a drum feature but Brown is also heard in a powerful and inventive solo indicating that a new trumpet star had arrived on the New York scene. Later that month he teamed up with J.J. Johnson who was making a welcome return as a recording artist after a brief retirement. Brown’s outstanding performances here especially on Capri and Turnpike convinced Blue Note to award him a recording contract.

As soon as the J.J. session ended, he drove down to Atlantic City for a summer residency at the Paradise club with a Dameron group that included Johnny Coles, Cecil Payne, Gigi Gryce, Benny Golson, Percy Heath and Philly Joe Jones. They backed variety acts and also played for dancers and on one occasion Sammy Davis sat in on drums. At the end of the residency Quincy Jones arranged for Brown, Gryce and Golson to join Lionel Hampton’s band. The leader would often have his musicians marching up and down the aisles at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre and elsewhere playing The Saints, Flying Home and Hamp’s Boogie Woogie. Jones called Hampton “The first rock’n’roll bandleader” but his showmanship did not go down too well with some of the newer band members especially Brown and Gryce. Gigi and the trumpeter had similar life-styles which did not include drinking, smoking or taking drugs. They became very close and Gigi went on to become godfather to Clifford Brown Junior.

Just before the Hampton band took off on a three month tour of Europe, Clifford made his debut as a leader for the Blue Note label.  Gryce contributed Hymn Of The Orient which is taken faster than Stan Getz did when he introduced it a year earlier. Gigi also provided it with a new A section in the last chorus. Cherokee has him centre-stage throughout clearly delighting in Ray Noble’s sophisticated challenges in the tricky bridge passages. The track concludes with some exciting exchanges with Art Blakey. In contrast, Easy Living finds him at his most romantic and lyrical with a warm, broad sound especially in the lower register. 

Lionel Hampton, encouraged by his formidable wife Gladys, had a reputation of being less than generous with salaries but the lure of a 1953 European tour was enough for everyone to overcome their reservations about the money. With its JATP-like atmosphere of excitement the band proved to be hugely popular with European audiences. Standing ovations began at the first two concerts in Oslo on 6 September where 2000 people attended and apparently continued for the rest of the tour. The Hamptons made it clear that the musicians would not be able to record without the leader while they were in Europe and anyone found breaking this rule would be sent back to the States. Brown, Gryce and Jimmy Cleveland found that producers were desperate to record them and the musicians for their part were just as keen to supplement their band income. Lionel and Gladys tried but could not prevent clandestine recordings taking place. 

On 15 September having engineered an escape from their hotel by climbing down a fire escape after midnight, Brown, Quincy Jones and Art Farmer made their way to the Metronome studios in Stockholm for a record date with some of Sweden’s finest. Ake Persson, Arne Domnerus, Lars Gullin, Bengt Hallberg, Gunnar Johnson and Jack Noren  were on-hand to interpret Lover Come Back To Me, Falling In Love With Love and two of Jones’s new originals Stockholm Sweetnin’ and ‘Scuse These Blues. Clifford has a bright, sparkling chorus on Lover Come Back and ‘Scuse These Blues is notable for six choruses of exchanges between Brown and Farmer both in cup mutes. The tongue in cheek coda here is right out of the Dixieland play-book. During the tour Hampton often pitted the two trumpets against each other because as Farmer said, “Hamp goes for battles so this was his chance for a never-ending trumpet battle between us”.

While the band was in Paris, Vogue Records recorded Brown and Gryce on no less than six occasions from 28 September to 15 October. The first date featured Hampton sidemen together with French musicians like Fred Gerard, Henri Renaud and Pierre Michelot. Gryce’s extended feature for Clifford titled Brown Skins was an adventurous piece of writing. After a slow, dramatic opening the trumpeter takes off on a stunning up-tempo examination of Cherokee, one of his favourite sequences. In contrast Quincy Jones’s Keepin’ Up With Jonesy has a lightly swinging Count Basie feel with eloquent muted conversations between Brown and Art Farmer. Based on Moonglow it also features an outstanding contribution from Jimmy Cleveland. The following day Clifford’s sextet with Gryce, Jimmy Gourley, Renaud, Michelot and Jean-Louis Viale recorded the trumpeter’s Goofin’ With Me. Opening and closing with an eight bar riff it allows the principals to stretch out inventively on the changes of Indiana. Blue Concept is another fine original this time by Gryce with some impressive double-time passages in the second and third choruses by Clifford.

Hampton’s band then left for a series of concerts in Dusseldorf, Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Berlin. On their return to Paris, Brown and Gryce resumed their sextet date with a selection of Gryce originals. His Minority was introduced here which was to become a jazz standard with performances by Art Farmer, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Lee Konitz among others. The attractive Salute To The Bandbox based on I’ll Remember April has the composer’s finest solo of the set with Clifford matching him all the way. The next day – 9 October – two big band titles were recorded featuring a mix of Hampton sidemen and French locals. Brown is only heard on Bum’s Rush, an extrovert Woody Herman-like chart by Quincy Jones.

Clifford’s last Paris date occurred a week later with Renaud, Michelot and Benny Bennett. Blue And Brown is all trumpet on a theme-less blues with a bridge. It Might As Well Be Spring is one of his most sensitive ballad readings with extensive use of his warm lower register. The up-tempo Song Is You finds him inspired by one of Jerome Kern’s loveliest melodies, resulting in five minutes of sheer beauty. Having played with Brown on most of the Paris dates Renaud said, “He possessed the highest qualities: a world of technique, a real trumpet sound fat and strong and a wonderful ear.” 

These hastily arranged European sessions established his reputation as a soloist of the first-rank which was acknowledged by DownBeat writers a year later who voted him the New Star on trumpet. By the time the Hampton band arrived back in NYC in November 1953 some of the sidemen threatened to go to the union over salary disputes. In a 1991 interview with Cadence magazine Jimmy Cleveland said “We got shafted with the money… (Hampton) would always do that”. For his part the leader intended filing charges with the AFM against the musicians for recordings made in Paris using arrangements from his library without permission.

Brownie began free-lancing around NYC before accepting an invitation to join Art Blakey for a two-week booking at Birdland with Horace Silver, Curly Russell and his friend Lou Donaldson. Although not billed as such this was the forerunner of the Jazz Messengers. On 21 February 1954 Blue Note was on hand to record the group performing bebop staples like Night In Tunisia, Wee-Dot, Now’s The Time and Confirmation. The prodigious Horace Silver contributed two outstanding originals to the date: Quicksilver based on Lover Come Back To Me which has humorous references to Donkey Serenade and Oh You Beautiful Doll and Split Kick, a clever contrafact of There Will Never Be Another You. Clifford’s ballad feature Once In A While is notable for the way he introduces waltz time during the bridge and also for his extended, brilliantly executed coda.

A couple of weeks after the Birdland date he received a telephone call from Max Roach which resulted in a complete change of direction for them both. Roach had been encouraged by Gene Norman to form his own group and with the promise of work from the promoter he invited Brown to fly out to Los Angeles and join him.  At the time Max was in the house-band at the Lighthouse in Los Angeles where he had a six month contract. He had taken over from Shelly Manne for the fifty-two week, five-nights a week gig but there was a clause in his contract committing him to finding a suitable replacement if he left. Stan Levey had just arrived back in town after Stan Kenton had temporarily disbanded so Max called him. After discussions with Howard Rumsey, Levey took over at a salary of $200.00 a week. 

Max and Brownie rented a two-bedroom apartment together which facilitated in-depth musical policy discussions as well as lengthy chess games which the trumpeter usually won. Sonny Stitt had travelled with Clifford from New York and the quintet’s first booking was at the California club on Santa Barbara Avenue owned by Gene Norman. Stitt only remained with the group for about six weeks. He was replaced by Teddy Edwards who with Carl Perkins and George Bledsoe appeared on the quintet’s first concert performance at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on 13 July 1954. Only four titles were recorded but the date is notable for the trumpeter’s lengthy and inventive workout on Clifford’s Axe based on The Man I Love. Soon after this concert a Nat Hentoff feature in DownBeat was head-lined Clifford Brown-The New Dizzy. The quintet continued to evolve because two weeks after the Pasadena date Edwards, Perkins and Bledsoe left and were replaced by Harold Land, Richie Powell and George Morrow and this line-up remained together for the next year. Clifford told Nat Hentoff at the time, “One thing which has hurt small jazz units is the fact that bookers haven’t been sure they’d get the same personnel the next time they hired a unit. Max and I have had offers to headline as singles but unless they hire the whole unit we won’t take the job”. In May the quintet undertook a west coast tour promoted by Gene Norman that climaxed at the Shrine Auditorium in Hollywood on 31 August.

Just before signing an exclusive contract with Emarcy the trumpeter recorded one of the most unusual albums in his discography for Dick Bock of Pacific Jazz. The quintet had been appearing at the Tiffany club opposite Art Pepper and Jack Montrose. Bock decided to feature Brown and Roach with some of the best local musicians like Stu Williamson, Zoot Sims, Bob Gordon, Russ Freeman and Carson Smith.  Montrose was hired to write the arrangements but as he told me in a JJ interview, 

“The music was written with Max in mind but he got into a money hassle with Dick and bowed out at the last minute. Shelly Manne was called and he played just beautifully, bless his heart”. A few months earlier, Clifford had been in the trumpet section of Hampton’s barnstorming big band but on this occasion he embraced quintessential west-coast cool as if to the manner born. The tricky charts are immaculately performed by the hand-picked ensemble beginning with Clifford’s Tiny Kapers which becomes a fugue in Montrose’s hands. Blueberry Hill and Gone With The Wind were included apparently at Bock’s insistence although this did not please Brownie. Three more of his superior originals (Joy Spring, Daahud and Bones For Jones) were also recorded. These particular charts were reprised in 2002 on The Clifford Brown Project by the Mark Masters Ensemble and Clifford’s solos were transcribed for a four-piece trumpet section - Capri 74059-2.

The quintet’s first Emarcy recording took place on 2 August. Delilah opens with an extended ostinato which became one of the group’s favourite devices. Brownie clearly delights in the minor chord changes and the piece concludes with a masterful Roach solo mostly on mallets. The group throw-the-kitchen-sink at Parisian Thoroughfare’s opening vamp with hints of American In Paris, the Mareillaise, the Can-Can and assorted traffic noises. A few years after this recording I had some saxophone lessons from Wally Houser who eventually became an attorney for Ronnie Scott’s club. A fine alto player he wrote this chart minus the quotes together with Joy Spring as an exercise for me. Incidentally Manhattan Transfer recorded a vocalese version of Joy Spring with Jon Hendricks’s lyrics in 1985 (Atlantic 7-81266). There have been nearly 200 recordings of Jordu but the quintet’s version here is surely the definitive one. It is notable for the way the principals creatively negotiate their way through the intriguing bridge modulations in the solo choruses. The sleeve-note incorrectly states the group premiered it but composer Duke Jordan recorded it first seven months earlier. Sweet Clifford is a super-fast excursion on Sweet Georgia Brown. It becomes an extensive outing for Max Roach who demonstrates once again the art of creating a musical solo even at the ferocious tempo of 80 bars to the minute. I Get A Kick Out Of You is a thrilling exercise in mixed metres – 3/4 and 4/4 – originally introduced to the group by Sonny Stitt. 

A few days later Emarcy arranged two studio dates designed to replicate the jam-session formula popularised by JATP. Clifford and Max were featured with an assortment of stars from the label’s roster like Herb Geller, Joe Maini, Clark Terry, Maynard Ferguson and Dinah Washington. It has to be said that these over-long titles, some stretching to twenty minutes or more, fail to maintain interest. Brown and Roach were apparently uncomfortable and Mark Gardener has dismissed them as “Less than essential”.  In a JJ interview Herb Geller told me “The highlight for me was playing with Clifford who was a marvellous, extraordinary human being and musician. His sound was beautiful and soulful with such a sparkling way of playing”. 

After three months in California the quintet relocated to the east coast for an October engagement at the Blue Note in Philadelphia which was followed by two weeks at Detroit’s Crystal Lounge. Over the next month Emarcy embarked on three memorable albums placing the trumpeter in totally new and stimulating settings with Sarah Vaughan, Helen Merrill and a string date with Neal Hefti. Sarah Vaughan was accompanied by her regular trio of Jimmy Jones, Joe Benjamin and Roy Haynes. Herbie Mann and the inventive Paul Quinichette were on hand too. The Vice-Pres lives up to Bob Brookmeyer’s description of him as “The only fellow I know who can order a meal on tenor”. The string album recorded over three days in January 1955 became Clifford’s most popular session and influenced Wynton Marsalis to take up the trumpet. The spotlight here often shines on the rich timbre of his work in the lower register. My guess is that Hefti’s scores did not indicate exactly what, but where Clifford was to play. Sticking close to the melodies he was free to interpret these songbook classics in his own distinctive way making elaborate use of embellishments and delicate grace notes with a more pronounced use of vibrato than usual. 

A month later the quintet was back in the studio for a date that introduced some new material mostly by Clifford Brown: Gerkin For Perkin, Swingin’, George’s Dilemma, The Blues Walk and Sandu. Richie Powell contributed Jacqui and Gertrude’s Bounce while Harold Land weighed in with Land’s End. Swingin’ is an up tempo romp based on I Never Knew and is the sort of vehicle the group might have used as an opener on club dates. The atmospheric George’s Dilemma is a gem. Opening with a delicate four bar cymbal figure it leads to a bass ostinato which is repeated throughout the A section of the structure. The Afro-Cuban background inspires Clifford to one of his most melodic solos on record.  There is some fine Richie Powell in double-octaves here too. Roach’s apposite description of the piece as “A romance between Afro-Cuban and jazz rhythm” is right on the money. The cute Jacqui is notable for the charming and unexpected quote from Dizzy Gillespie’s Con Alma in the coda. Emarcy’s reissue incorrectly shows a 1956 date but it was actually recorded on 25 February 1955. The tenor-man’s Land’s End is an outstanding composition worthy of Benny Golson at his very best. Cherokee opens with one of the group’s trademark ostinatos humorously suggesting a connection between Native Americans and Ray Noble’s song-title. In these PC days it would probably be frowned on in some quarters. It had become one of the trumpeter’s specialities and he storms through blissfully unaware of the challenging 90 bars to the minute tempo. 

Joe Glaser was now handling the quintet’s bookings. Their popular recordings opened the door for regular club dates in cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago. In July they performed a well-received set at the Newport Jazz Festival and the co-leaders also sat in for a chaotic Tea For Two with Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker and the Dave Brubeck quartet before a wildly enthusiastic audience - definitely one for completists though. Tired of being on the road and wanting to return to his family in Los Angeles, Harold Land decided to leave the quintet in October that year. He had this to say about playing with Brown, “It was a constant challenge to play alongside him. He was a very great artist”. Sonny Rollins was available and the new line-up opened at Philadelphia’s Showboat the following month. After one of their customary standing-room-only engagements at New York’s Basin Street the quintet made its recording debut on 4 January 1956. In a discography replete with Desert Island Disc material one of the titles from that session deserves special mention. Tadd Dameron was in the studio and he arranged What Is This Thing Called Love which finds the quintet at its most inventive and exciting best. In March they recorded five titles under Rollins’ leadership including two of his new originals – Pent-Up House and Valse Hot. Years later when Sonny was asked to name the three musicians he admired the most he replied “Lester Young, Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown”. 

Three months later on 26 June Clifford Brown’s career was brought to a sudden end when he was involved in a fatal car accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Driving with Nancy and Richie Powell to a booking at Chicago’s Blue Note their car hit a bridge abutment before rolling down a steep embankment. All three occupants were killed.

A good example of how his peers felt about him can be found in a musicians’ poll that Leonard Feather conducted in 1956. These are a just a few of the artists who favoured him with their vote: Harry Carney, Conte Candoli, Buck Clayton, Jimmy Cleveland, Miles Davis, Terry Gibbs, Dizzy Gillespie, Milt Jackson, J.J.Johnson, Quincy Jones, Oscar Peterson, Bud Powell, Max Roach, George Shearing and George Wallington.”

Selected Discography

Brownie – The Complete Emarcy Recordings Of Clifford Brown (10 CDs) – CD 838 306-2

Clifford Brown – Joy Spring (4 CDs) Properbox 86.

Clifford Brown – Jazz Immortal – MatchBall CD 48016.

Max Roach – Clifford Brown Quintet –The California Concerts –Fresh Sound FSRCD 377

Art Blakey-Clifford Brown –Immortal Concerts – Giants Of Jazz CD 53033

Recommended Reading

Clifford Brown – The Life and Art of the Legendary Jazz Trumpeter. Nick Catalano (Oxford University Press).

Rat Race Blues – The Musical Life Of Gigi Gryce. Noal Cohen & Michael Fitzgerald (Berkeley Hills Books).

In compiling this appreciation I would like to acknowledge the help received from John Bell, Bob Weir and the Jazz Institute in Darmstadt, Germany.

Clifford Brown on The Left Coast: The Origins of the Max Roach - Clifford Brown Quintet

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Rumsey's real coup, however, was in bringing bebop legend Max Roach to the club as Manne's replacement. For the next several months Roach served as the unlikely drum-keeper of the Lighthouse flame — a period that proved exciting not only for inimitable percussion work, but also for Roach's many friends who sat in with the band. "When Max Roach came in from New York to take over Shelly Manne's drum chair," Rumsey relates, "he drove up with Charles Mingus and Miles Davis in the car with him."' Roach's arrival signaled a reversal of compass points from west to east. During the drummer's brief tenure, the Lighthouse hosted some of the brightest jazz stars from the East Coast scene. Rumsey continues:

Miles was just starting to play again after a long sabbatical back home in St. Louis. He hung around for a while, stayed at my home for a week, and did a couple of guest shots at the club. . . . Mingus never played bass for me, but he sat in several times as intermission pianist. As for Max, he set the whole town on fire. Out of his stint I developed long-lasting friendships: Dizzy, Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Parker. …”

- Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California 1945-1960

Max Roach came to California in the fall of 1953 to replace Shelly Manne as drummer with Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars.

He arrived by car with Miles Davis, who, due to his heroin addiction, was looking for a change of venue, and bassist Charles Mingus, who was originally from Los Angeles.

At the time, Max and Mingus were business partners as co-owners of the Debut recording label which they left in the capable hands of Mingus’ wife Celia who remained in New York to oversee its operation while they sojourned to what geocentric New Yorkers disparagingly refer to as “The Left Coast”.

Many Jazz fans are not aware that one of the forerunners of the Hard Bop style of Jazz - the Max Roach - Clifford Brown Quintet - a style of Jazz usually associated with New York City - had its origins in sunny, southern California

In his definitive treatment of West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California 1945-1960 [pp. 308-311], Ted Gioia offers the following narrative about how the Max Roach - Clifford Brown Quintet became a reality, albeit, tragically, a short-lived one.

“Despite his growing reputation as the outstanding exponent of modern jazz drumming, Roach had been working almost exclusively as a sideman. He had recorded as a leader for Debut—the label he had founded with Charles Mingus—but, by his own admission, had not yet "got seriously involved in bandleading." In California, he was asked by jazz impresario Gene Norman to start a group of his own. Promised an extended booking at the California Club, Roach agreed to form a quintet. His next move was to send for a young trumpeter from back east named Clifford Brown. These two musicians, one already famous in the jazz world and the other soon to be so, were about to become the most prominent members in one of the finest — if not the best — jazz combos of the early 1950s.

Brown's work in jazz was as striking for its architectonic structure as for its emotional immediacy. And this quest for order was as much a part of Clifford's life as it was integral to his music. Studies of highly gifted youngsters have revealed that in three areas of human endeavor — music, mathematics, and chess — talent becomes apparent at an especially young age. Clifford Brown's biography (as well as those of many other jazz musicians) substantiates the view that these three highly structured ways of seeing the universe may be correlated. Brown showed early ability in all three disciplines. Born in Wilmington, Delaware, on October 30, 1930, he revealed, first and foremost, a prodigious musical talent. In addition to quickly mastering the trumpet, which he began in his early teens, he pursued studies in piano and arranging while still in high school. When he entered Delaware State College, he started as a mathematics major, only switching to music after transferring to Maryland State. Brown's complementary skills as a chess player have been attested to by, among others, his bandmate Max Roach. And Roach should know: He was a fine player in his own right, who made the all-city chess team when still back in Brooklyn. By his late teens, Brown's career as a promising musician had come to overshadow these subsidiary interests. Even so, the ordered universe of mathematics and chess may have found its way into the trumpeter's music. At its best, his playing combined the raw passion of jazz with the precision and logic of composed music.

In a macabre foreshadowing. Brown was injured in an automobile accident in June 1950. For almost a year his promising musical career was placed on hold. His comeback was slow at first, and his first record date, with Chris Powell and His Blue Flames, did not take place until March 1952, almost two years after the accident. Only six weeks later, however, Brown was back in the studio again, this time with a much finer band consisting of Lou Donaldson, Elmo Hope, Percy Heath, and Philly Joe Jones. From this point until his tragic early death in a second auto accident in June 1956, Brown would record and perform regularly with the finest musicians in jazz. His few recordings are among the most important jazz legacies from the 1950s.

By the time of his fateful journey to California, he had already impressed many with his precocious skills on the trumpet. Both Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were strong supporters of the young musician: Parker's glowing recommendation had convinced Art Blakey to add Brownie to his band for a brief period earlier in 1954, while Gillespie had been among the first to tell Max Roach about the extraordinary talent of this future colleague. In addition to these illustrious connections, Brown had already gained valuable experience recording and playing with Tadd Dameron, Lionel Hampton, J. J. Johnson, and Gigi Gryce. These early sideman sessions, as well as a few dates as a leader from this period, demonstrated that Brown had already achieved a mature, poised style and a polished virtuosity well before his twenty-third birthday.

Perhaps the most striking element of this provocative trumpet style was Brown's distinctive sound. When many aspiring bop trumpeters were willing to sacrifice tonal clarity in order to play fast, Brown proved that it was possible to have it both ways: One could (or at least Brown could) play complex, rapid-fire melodic lines while still maintaining a warm, well-rounded tone. Building on the legacy of Fats Navarro, Brown could boast of the purest, cleanest sound of any of the young bebop trumpeters.

One could well imagine Brown playing the classical trumpet repertoire — much as Wynton Marsalis would do a generation later — without having to alter his basic musical conception. (Nor is it a coincidence that Marsalis's earliest jazz work showed the strong influence of Clifford Brown. Brown was the perfect role model for this latter-day master of both the classical and jazz idioms.) This keen sense of sound provided the foundation for Brown's other musical virtues: his melodic creativity, his speed of execution, his sense of phrasing and dynamics.

The Brown/Roach group was perhaps the strongest working jazz band of its day, the ensembles of Parker and Gillespie notwithstanding. At first, however, the personnel of the band underwent a number of changes. Roach's initial choice for the saxophone chair. Sonny Stitt, made the trip out west with Brown, only to leave the band after a few weeks. Stitt's replacement was Teddy Edwards, a powerful tenorist who had made a name for himself on recordings with Howard McGhee and Dexter Gordon a few years before. Edwards was playing in the San Francisco area during the summer of 1954 but returned to Southern California when Roach asked him to finish out the group's engagement at the California Club. … “

Although Edwards did not remain with the group when it went on the road a short while later—by then Harold Land had taken his place— he participated in the group's first recording for Gene Norman. … , by the time the Brown/Roach group returned to the studio in early August, the side-men had changed to the very successful combination of Harold Land, Richie Powell, and George Morrow.

In the interim, Brown had participated in a very different session for Richard Bock's Pacific label. Tenor saxophonist Jack Montrose was called in as an arranger and proceeded to create a distinctive setting for Brownie's horn, one very different from the hard bop orientation of the Roach group. Montrose's tight, medium-groove arrangements were typical of the "West Coast sound," but to counterbalance this tendency toward the cool, Montrose wisely drew on some of the more hard-swinging musicians in the area to complement Brown's energetic style. Zoot Sims and Bob Gordon both proved to be compatible front-line foils for the young trumpeter.”

These Pacific Jazz recordings by the Roach - Brown 5tet are included in Clifford Brown: The Complete Blue Note and Pacific Jazz Recordings [CDP 7243 8 34195 2 4] for which its producer, Michael Cuscuna provided the following notes about Brownie and the tracks he cut for Pacific Jazz.

“It was just four years. One presidential term. The interval between Olympic contests. No time at all. Virtually everything we know about trumpeter Clifford Brown — who at age 26 was killed on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, in an accident that also claimed the life of pianist Richie Powell — comes from what he recorded in one incredibly narrow four-year window.

Of course Brown's storybook transformation took a bit longer: In less than a decade, he went from semi-unknown to jazz royalty, from student to master stylist. With the methodical dedication of a professional athlete, he established himself on the jazz scene of his hometown, Wilmington, Delaware, and then nearby Philadelphia, and then the world. Before he'd finished his first year of college, the network of musicians on the East Coast were buzzing about this unusually proficient young talent—Charlie Parker was so enamored, he told Art Blakey not to bother bringing a trumpet player to a gig in Philadelphia. How quickly did Brown ascend? One year he was making his recording debut with R&B bandleader Chris Powell and his Blue Flames, the next he was doing sessions with established

bebop trombonist Jay Jay Johnson and leading a date that featured MJQ pianist John Lewis, By 1954, when the Downbeat critics poll identified him as the new trumpet star, he was already co-leading the group with Max Roach that ushered in and helped delineate the bebop-derived music that became known as hard bop. Two years later, he was dead. Jazz artists traditionally expect to get a few years to develop; Duke Ellington, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis and others established their musical identities over decades. Listening to Clifford, any Clifford, it's obvious he never counted on that. Every solo was the one for the books. His phrases carried an irrepressible fight-to-the-finish urgency, and his tone practically demanded attention. A mathematician and chess player, he cared about clarity more than any jumble of notes. He did develop in the short duration of his recording career, but even his early solos sound poised, carefully thought-out, complete.

Everyone who heard Clifford Brown in the early '50s remembers him being fully ready, even as a very young man. Jimmy Heath, active in Philadelphia jazz at the time, says he can still hear the way "this shy kid" sounded when Brown sat in with Heath's group at Wilmington's Two Spot in the late '40s: "He came in and wiped everybody out. He was already polished. It was pretty unexpected coming from this gentle introverted person."

It is this unexpectedly wise-beyond-his-years attitude that makes "early" Clifford Brown—the first few years of his recording career, as opposed to the last few—so important. These discs, which collect his contributions to Blue Note as both sideman and leader, suggest new angles from which to view this firebrand. They're the oft-overlooked back pages of a man who's influenced everyone who followed him in jazz trumpet. More than footnotes, they're the stuff he recorded in the midst of building his reputation, and as such, they capture an artist laying the foundation, developing the vocabulary, and beginning to test the limits. Like many who sought to utilize the language of bebop, he worked out on its difficult slalom courses nightly, and understood that mistakes were part of the cost of doing business. If 1955 and '56 represent Brown's mature zenith, then 1953 and '54 were his crucial formative time, a period of explosive growth and near-constant financial worries. Brown could scarcely afford to turn down work, as the critics understood: writing about Brown's first date as a leader (disc one, known as the Clifford Brown Memorial Album), Down Beat's Nat Hentoff ended his 4-star rave by announcing "Brownie has really arrived; now let's hope he can get some steady gigs."

In 1953, the Blue Note stable was a logical point of entry for jazzmen in pursuit of steady work. After signing Thelonious Monk in 1947. the label somehow missed bebop's other pioneers, and played catch-up by documenting the work of a large group of younger, bop-influenced players. The leaders changed depending on the day, but the quality of musicianship and the spirit of the sessions remained consistently high. It made sense for an emerging artist like Clifford Brown, then just entering the close-knit circuit of New York musicians, to get a call from Blue Note. Alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson, who co-led a June 9 session with Clifford that was the trumpeter's first appearance on the label, remembers the atmosphere this way: "Everybody was real compatible, both personally and musically. It just happened that in New York at that time, there were a lot of like-minded musicians — situations where it almost didn't matter who you got, everybody could play."

By the time Brown got his first call to record, he could certainly play. Born in Wilmington on October 30, 1930, he became fascinated by the look of a trumpet his father, a multi-instrumentalist, had around the house. He started playing at age 13, when his father bought him his own horn. While in junior high, he studied music with Robert Lowery, a musician whose clinics and jazz band rehearsals were well-known in the community. Lowery remembers Brownie as a "serious" student: "He really wanted to get out of it everything he could, that's why he stood out more. Not right off the bat, after he learned exactly how to hear. I have a method, and when you learn that method you can actually hear what you're going to play. He got it."

Marcus Belgrave, who followed Brown through Lowery's classes, often heard Clifford practice. "When he played, everything was scientifically laid out. He was into writing ideas down, he would always tell me to write things down. He'd play everything through the keys." Belgrave remembers that even after Brown began playing jazz gigs, he'd still show up at this weekly community marching band whenever he could. "I asked him why he bothered to show up to play these circus-type tunes, and he said "I like all kinds of music," and from that point on, I delved into everything I could get my hands on. That one thing he said really turned me around."

By the dawn of bebop. Brown had already identified his inspiration: He loved the crisp articulation and intricate phrases of the ill-fated trumpeter Fats Navarro, Max Roach recalled that in every interview situation, Brown would always mention Navarro first. He met his idol in 1949, on a gig in Philadelphia, and was encouraged by the bebop master, who died the next year from tuberculosis that was complicated by narcotics addiction. After attracting the attention of Dizzy Gillespie and others, Brown then had his own trouble: He was in a car accident in June 1950, and spent most of the year in the hospital, recovering. Among his visitors was Gillespie.

When he was back in action, he played with Bud Powell in Philadelphia, then with bandleader Chris Powell (no relation), and then in 1953, landed a job with Tadd Dameron's band playing the summer season in Atlantic City. That summer he also managed to record twice—with Jay Jay Johnson and in his first date as a leader. In the fall of that year, he did a European tour with Lionel Hampton's band, where he met, among others, the trumpeter and arranger Quincy Jones—who contributed some compositions to his first date, and supervised some recordings Brown made while in Europe with Hampton. In November, Brown found himself in New York, employed by Art Blakey; the two Live At Birdland discs were recorded in February 1954, and featured future Jazz Messenger Horace Silver on piano.

Later that year, Max Roach, who was leading a group at the Lighthouse, flew East to propose a partnership. Brown accepted, and that summer, the group worked the L.A. circuit while Brown was engaged by producer Richard Bock  play on a West Coast-style date—the Jazz Immortal Featuring Zoot Sims session found on disc two. A week later, the Brown/Roach band hit the studio, and one of the great Synergies of jazz was born: From the summer of '54 until Brown's death in '56, there was no band that more skillfully combined the breakneck tempos and harmonic excitement of bebop with more relaxed and musical textures that would become hard bop. (This music, as well as Brown's later solo records, is chronicled on the 10-CD set Brownie: The Complete EmArcy Recordings Of Clifford Brown, issued in 1989.)

Brown had a few advantages over some of his peers. He was a disciplined man—his wife, LaRue Brown Watson, remembers squeezing in time with Clifford between his practice sessions. He was also drug-free at a time when musicians leaned on narcotics the way baseball players rely on chewing tobacco. Says Lou Donaldson: "Back then, a lot of guys were strung out. But Clifford was strong. There was nothing to get in his way. He was powerful, the guy who could play all night and never split a note."

Brown was a leader well before he became a bandleader. He led with his instrument, with his innate ability to place phrases so they'd sting, or caress. He had enviable command of the instrument, but was no mere button-pusher; his strength was the rare ability to give technically demanding passages a human heart. He announced himself with terse fanfares — he had a knack for starting his solos with phrases that snapped listeners to attention — yet never relied solely on the herculean feats. Trumpet players gush in admiration over his gifts: Belgrave said that at one point, he had to stop listening to Clifford Brown, because Brown "made you feel so inadequate you'd want to put your horn in the trash." Art Farmer, already somewhat established on the scene at that time, said much the same thing in an interview shortly after Brown's death: "...He was such a sweet and warm human being, I was forced to like him even though he made things very difficult for me as a trumpet player."

Brown emulated a few Navarro-isms, most notably the beboppers' articulation. Where most trumpet players grouped their thoughts by Slurring notes together, Brown, like Navarro before him, used his tongue more frequently, creating clipped, machine-gun lines in which every note was crisply delineated. For Wynton Marsalis, this remains one of Brown's signatures: "It's real hard to play the trumpet and tongue that much," Marsalis says. "That was the way he phrased. If you play a Charlie Parker solo on the trumpet, it sounds like Clifford. He had them fingers, too."

Brown also possessed an unerring knack for drama. With one off-balance phrase or a sudden reversal of direction, he could suggest sweeping mood changes; where many musicians operated at one volume, he'd establish a quiet mood, then abandon it in favor of a celebratory shout. Saxophonist Benny Golson, who worked with Brown in Dameron's band, admired the trumpeter's control of resources, particularly on ballads: "He could change from a meek lamb, musically, into a fierce tiger. He could play the bottom, top, loud, soft; he was playing the whole instrument."

Not incidentally, these elements of his musical personality helped non-musicians respond to what Brownie did on the bandstand. Jimmy Heath tells the story of a gig he played with Clifford at Spider Kelly's club in Philadelphia. "It was a little place on Mole St., near Market, and a woman who was completely out of her head, you know intoxicated, came up to the bandstand after the set. We'd been playing all the bebop heads we heard Dizzy and them play, and this lady comes up and says “I don't know what it is that you guys are playing, but you" — and she points right at Clifford — "are playing the hell out of it." Clifford had his head bowed in his usual humble way, and we were laughing. She didn't know what it was, but she knew he was doing it well."

…

“The last eight tracks on disc two come from the summer of 1954, when Brown met up with Max Roach and they were beginning to work in Los Angeles. Producer Richard Bock proposed a West Coast-style four-horn session featuring Clifford, with arrangements by Jack Montrose; Clifford, always looking for new challenges, agreed to it. Montrose remembers spending day and night with Clifford: "Art Pepper and I had a group that was playing opposite Brown and Roach at the Tiffany Club. For a couple of weeks there, I would go to his hotel room during the day and go over his tunes, and then we'd play at night." Montrose says he worked up charts on a few Brownie originals—"Daahoud," "Joy Spring," "Tiny Capers," "Bones For Jones"—and then was told by Bock to write arrangements for "Blueberry Hill" and "Gone With The Wind." "I don't think they were Clifford's choice, so I had to make something good out of them." Montrose also had to bridge the stylistic difference between Brown's searing-hot mode of operation and the more laid-back West Coast style. This was another challenge, Montrose recalls: "It wasn't the kind of thing he'd been into— everything he'd played had more fire. But his tunes were terrific, and everybody was surprised by how warm he was. I think he was less hung up by the style than by the fact he'd never played with those musicians before. But he got over that. It was a really happy date."

What was most striking for her, LaRue Brown Watson says, was the way Clifford was able to keep the different styles separate. "This was something so totally different from anything that he had ever done or would do again. I always thought it was strange that he could go into the studio during the daytime and play the kind of music that came out of Pacific Jazz, and at night turn around and play something totally different with Max."

As Michael concludes: “These moments and others, are not just the work of a clever button-pusher. They’re the product of a true thinker, an artist who was serious about communicating through his improvisations.”