Clifford Brown was solely 25 when he died in a automotive accident in 1956, but the wealthy physique of labor he left behind sealed his fame as one of many best trumpet gamers who ever lived. Quincy Jones even described Brown as one of the necessary musicians of all time. “I believe that a hundred years from now, when people look back at the 20th century, they will look at Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dizzy Gillespie as our Mozarts, our Chopins, our Bachs, and Beethovens,” Jones advised New Orleans Public Radio in 2013.
Musical beginnings
Clifford Benjamin Brown was born in Wilmington, Delaware, on October 30, 1930, the youngest of eight kids in a musical household that included his opera singer sister, Geneva. Brown began on trumpet on the age of 13. “From the earliest time, I can remember it was the trumpet that fascinated me,” Brown advised jazz critic Nat Hentoff. “When I was too little to reach it, I would climb up to where it was, and I kept knocking it down.”
Brown gave few broadcast interviews in his life, however in a single performed in 1956 by Willis Conover for Voice of America, Brown mentioned his predominant influences have been trumpeters Fat Navarro, Louis Armstrong, and Roy Eldridge. “There is always ‘Pops’, Louis Armstrong, the father so-to-speak, and I was very inspired by Roy Eldridge’s playing on ‘Let Me Off Uptown,’” recalled Brown.
Recovering from a automotive crash
Though Brown studied as a arithmetic main at Delaware State College, he had his coronary heart set on a profession in music. He even overcame an vehicle catastrophe in 1950 on his approach to fulfilling that dream. On June 3, 1950, in a macabre foreshadowing of his later deadly accident, 19-year-old Brown accepted an early morning elevate residence from a gig at a home get together in Maryland. After the driving force swerved to keep away from hitting a deer, the auto overturned and two of the guy musician passengers have been killed. Brown was severely injured, struggling damaged bones in each legs, and a fracture in his torso. He wanted pores and skin grafts throughout his broken physique.
Brown at all times spoke of his gratitude in the direction of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, who visited Brown throughout his restoration and insisted that he needed to return to enjoying someday. Though issues along with his shoulder socket made supporting the trumpet virtually not possible within the early months, he step by step returned to enjoying music by practising on the piano. It says a lot for his fortitude that Brown, who was on crutches for months, additionally started to play the trumpet once more throughout a troublesome convalescence at his dad and mom’ residence.
By March 1952, Brown was effectively sufficient to play in his first recording session – with Chris Powell and His Blue Flames – and he grew to become virtually zealous in his devotion to follow. The esteemed Blue Observe saxophone participant Lou Donaldson, who recorded and toured with Brown presently, recalled that the trumpeter can be perfecting his expertise all day, even at six o’clock within the morning on a tour bus. “We would have breakfast and Clifford would practice… he would do lip exercises and mouth exercises all day,” Donaldson advised Jazz Wax.
Brown himself at all times mentioned that “the most important thing” a jazz musician might do was prepare away from the stage. Donaldson mentioned all of the arduous work strengthened Brown’s lips and enabled him to play three units an evening and nonetheless be firing after hours on stage.
In Could 1952, Brown obtained the possibility to sit down in with Charlie Parker for every week at Membership Harlem in Philadelphia. “Bird helped my morale a great deal,” Brown later advised Hentoff. “One night he took me in a corner and said, ‘I don’t believe it. I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t believe it.’”
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The golden period
Phrase quickly unfold concerning the trumpet prodigy’s expertise and over the subsequent 18 months, Brown performed with Lionel Hampton’s band and Artwork Blakey’s Quintet, with whom he recorded his debut album for Blue Observe known as New Star On the Horizon. Brown additionally recorded with Jay Jay Johnson for Blue Observe and appeared on “A Study in Dameronia” with Tadd Dameron for Status Information.
When singer Sarah Vaughan heard him play, she advised Powell, “I have to have Clifford for a record date.” She persuaded him to file together with her on the EmArcy Information album Sarah Vaughan (generally known as Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown), which is taken into account a traditional and was inducted into the Grammy Corridor of Fame in 1985. Flute maestro Herbie Mann, who additionally performed on the album, advised Brown’s biographer Nick Catalano that becoming a member of the younger trumpet participant within the studio was a “defining moment” for him. “Playing alongside Brownie was like being on a basketball court with Michael Jordan,” mentioned Mann. Brown’s elegant use of mutes is simply one of many many delights of an album that exhibits off his method for enjoying lengthy, flowing melodic traces and solos that shine with nice feeling.
One other key album is the 1955 EmArcy file Examine in Brown, which options the trumpeter with drummer Max Roach and pianist Richie Powell, the youthful brother of Bud Powell. Brown had moved out to Los Angeles by this time and had been working arduous on composing. The file comprises variations of his personal tunes “Swingin’,” “George’s Dilemma,” “Sandu,” and “Gerkin for Perkin.” The album additionally contained an outstanding model of Ray Noble’s “Cherokee.” Brown would have been honored to know that his idol Louis Armstrong stored a well-worn copy of the album in his music library and made notes about Brown’s music.
How Clifford Brown helped Sonny Rollins
“People did talk about him being a brilliant mathematician,” mentioned Don Glanden, Head of Graduate Jazz Research at Philadelphia College and the person who made the documentary Brownie Speaks. “Quincy Jones talks about him being able to calculate exchange rates for the band in his head when they were touring Europe with Lionel Hampton,” added Glanden.
Whereas he was making all his magnificent albums, Brown was fortunately married to Larue Brown Watson, whom he met in 1954. He wrote a music for her known as “LaRue,” which he carried out to her on Santa Monica seaside earlier than proposing. “It’s a beautiful slow ballad. It was never recorded by my grandfather,” mentioned trumpeter Clifford Brown III in 2018, “because he lost the privilege of recording this very special song to his good friend trumpeter Kenny Dorham in a chess match.”
Brown wasn’t a drinker or smoker, and his clean-cut angle had a profound affect on Sonny Rollins when the tenor saxophone maestro changed Harold Land within the band in December 1955. Rollins joined after a spell in a rehabilitation hospital for substance abuse. “When I came across Clifford it was ‘Wow, this guy can play so much music, and yet he’s clean living’… he ended up being a perfect model – such a light to me,” Rollins advised critic Stuart Nicholson.
Brown’s biographer Catalano put it merely: “No one in jazz ever had a bad word to say about Clifford Brown. Art Farmer was pitted against Clifford on the Lionel Hampton tour and even though there were these trumpet duels that Hampton forced them into night after night, Art said that even though he was scuffling for his life, he could never think of anything but respect, admiration, and real love for Clifford because he was such a wonderful person.”
Brown’s tragic early dying
Benny Golson, who went on to compose the timeless ballad “I Remember Clifford” – which has since been recorded by Donald Byrd, Ray Charles, and Gillespie – remembered in vivid element the surprising occasions of June 27, 1956. Golson’s gig with Gillespie’s band on the Apollo Theatre was interrupted by pianist Walter Davis Jr working on stage and shouting, “You heard? You heard? Brownie was killed. He was killed in a car accident!” Golson recalled that the band remained frozen in shock for an age.
Brown had been within the automotive with Richie Powell and his spouse Nancy, who was driving the musicians from Philadelphia to Chicago to satisfy up with Roach for the band’s subsequent look. Whereas on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Nancy misplaced management of the automotive on a moist stretch of highway, hit a bridge abutment, and rolled down a 75-foot embankment. All three passengers have been killed immediately.
Brown’s lasting legacy
The Clifford Brown Pageant, which is held in Wilmington annually, is only one manner that the legacy of the trumpeter lives on. Brown influenced a technology of musicians, together with Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, and Wynton Marsalis. Hubbard spent three years learning Brown’s music whereas at Jordan Conservatory, and Morgan was fortunate sufficient to have taken classes from Brown immediately.
Donald Byrd mentioned that every one trumpeters can be taught from Brown’s method and unequalled capability to create stunning modulations on the melody. “Clifford created a vocabulary that I and everyone since then has adopted,” Byrd advised Down Beat.
Brown additionally left some intricate, well-thought-out compositions, which have develop into requirements, together with “Sandu.” His tune “Daahoud” was a selected favourite of Gillespie’s, whereas Stan Getz at all times raved about “Joy Spring,” slicing his personal model for Harmony in 1981.
Though Brown’s time on earth was fleeting, his lasting impression on jazz historical past and trumpet enjoying is indelible. Sadly, we’ll by no means know simply how good he would have develop into. In response to the biography Little Jazz Large, Brown’s hero Roy Eldridge mentioned, after listening to concerning the teen’s dying, “I just liked the way Clifford blew his horn. As good as he was, he was going to be better.”
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