BLP 1526

 Clifford Brown - Memorial Album

Released - July 1956

Recording and Session Information

WOR Studios, NYC, June 9, 1953
Clifford Brown, trumpet; Lou Donaldson, alto sax; Elmo Hope, piano; Percy Heath, bass; "Philly" Joe Jones, drums.

BN490-3 tk.6 Carvin' The Rock
BN491-1 tk.8 Cookin'
BN492-0 tk.9 Brownie Speaks
BN493-0 tk.10 De-Dah
BN494-0 tk.11 You Go To My Head

Audio-Video Studios, NYC, August 28, 1953
Clifford Brown, trumpet; Gigi Gryce, alto sax, flute; Charlie Rouse, tenor sax; John Lewis, piano; Percy Heath, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

BN524-2 tk.3 Wail Bait
BN525-1 tk.9 Hymn Of The Orient
BN527-1 tk.21 Cherokee
BN528-0 tk.23 Easy Living
BN529-0 tk.24 Minor Mood

Session Photos

Lou Donaldson, Clifford Brown, Elmo Hope
June 9 1953 Session

Photos: Francis Wolff

Master Tape

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Hymn of the Orient	Gigi Gryce	28/08/1953
Easy Living	Ralph Rainger, Leo Robin	28/08/1953
Minor Mood	Clifford Brown	28/08/1953
Cherokee	Ray Noble	28/08/1953
Wail Bait	Quincy Jones	28/08/1953
Side Two
Brownie Speaks	Quincy Jones	09/06/1953
De-Dah	Elmo Hope	09/06/1953
Cookin'	Lou Donaldson	09/06/1953
You Go to My Head	J. Fred Coots, Haven Gillespie	09/06/1953
Carving the Rock	Elmo Hope, Sonny Rollins	09/06/1953

Credits

Cover Photo:	FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design:
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	LEONARD FEATHER

Liner Notes

It seems that in jazz the good, especially if they play trumpet, die young. Lost in their twenties or early thirties were Bix Beiderbecke, Bunny Berigan, Freddie Webster, Sonny Berman, Fats Navarro. When Clifford Brown’s automobile skidded off the highway in the small hours of June 26, 1956 he was just four months short of his twenty-sixth birthday. The man most musicians considered the greatest new trumpet talent of the new generation was killed outright.

It was Blue Note that had given Brownie his initial glimpse of fame by recording his first sessions only three years ago; by an ironic coincidence it was en route to another Blue Note, a night club in Chicago by the same name, that his career was cut short. Musicians all over the world mourned a loss that was all the more tragic in that it had taken the life of a man who, unlike so many artists of popular fiction and social fact, had lived cleanly and honorably, had remained studious and ambitious, had never done anything physically to destroy himself.

Combined on this record are the two sessions, originally released separately on ten inch LPs, that did so much to make Brownie a name to be reckoned with in jazz. It might be appropriate here to recall the biographical details of his brief span. Born Oct. 30, 1930, in Wilmington, Del., he received his first trumpet from his father on entering senior high school in 1945 and joined the school band shortly afterward. It was not until a year or so later that the mysterious world of jazz chord changes and improvisation began to shed its veil for Brownie. A talented musician and jazz enthusiast named Robert Lowery was credited by Brownie for the unveiling.

The teen-aged trumpeter began playing gigs in Philadelphia on graduating in 1948. That same year, he entered Delaware State College on a music scholarship, but there was one slight snag: the college happened to be momentarily short of a music department.

Brownie remained there a year anyway, majoring in mathematics, and taking up a little spare time by playing some Philadelphia dates with such preeminent bop figures as Kenny Dorham, Max Roach, J. J. Johnson and Fats Navarro. He acquired considerable inspiration and encouragement from Navarro, who was greatly impressed with the youngster's potentialities.

After the year at Delaware State, Brownie had a chance to enter a college that did boast a good music department, namely Maryland State. They also had a good 16-piece band, and he learned a lot about both playing and arranging until one evil evening in June 1950, when, on his way home from a gig, he was involved in the first of three automobile accidents, the last of which was to prove fatal.

For a whole year in 1950-51, Clifford Brown had plenty of opportunity for contemplation but precious little for improving his lip. It took just about a year, plus some verbal encouragement from Dizzy Gillespie, to set him back on the path from which he had been so rudely sideswiped.

He had his own group in Philly for a while, then joined the Chris Powell combo, with which he was working at Cafe Society when the date with too Donaldson was cut. There followed a stint with Tadd Dameron in Atlantic City, after which he joined Lionel Hampton, touring Europe with him in the fall of 1953. In 1954 Brownie won the Down Beat critics' poll as the new star of the year. Moving out to California, he formed an alliance with Max Roach that was to last until death broke up the team.

On the first side of the present record Brownie is heard in the company of Gigi Gryce, alto sax and flute, a colleague in the Hampton band at that time; Charlie Rouse, 32-year-old Washingtonian whose tenor sax was heard in the bands of Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington; John Lewis and Percy Heath of MJQ fame, and the ubiquitous, euphonious Mr. Blakey at the batterie.

A briskly performed original by Gigi Gryce, Hymn Of The Orient, opens the side. The second and third choruses of this minor-key work illustrate strikingly Brownie's capacity for creating long, flowing phrases and executing them impeccably. This passage, 65 seconds long, was to us a major highlight of the entire LP. Note also the solid underlining of Percy Heath and the fine contribution, both in solos and sectional work, of Art Blakey on this item.

An immediate contrast is offered by the lovely standard tune Easy Living, showing Brownie at his most elegant in the ballad mood. The Lewis keyboard provides a fragile, sensitive introduction before the sextet outlines Brownie’s moderately paced Minor Mood. This paves the way for the racehorse pace of Cherokee. The Ray Noble and His Orchestra standard, soaring off at a wild tempo, provides an energetic challenge to Brownie, who is later spelled by Blakey in some fours. The side ends with Wail Bait, a melodic-style bop theme, which has a fine chorus split between Gigi and John Lewis and some of Brownie‘s most eloquent thoughts in a full chorus, plus 16 bars of Charlie Rouse followed by some neatly-etched ensemble playing.

On the second side are the products of a session featuring Clifford with Lou Donaldson, the alto sax wizard, who was born in 1926 in Badin, N. C. The rhythm section is made up of Elmo Hope, who has been heard in his own LP, New Faces - New Sounds; Philly Joe Jones, a favorite drummer of most modern jazzmen, and Percy Heath again on bass.

Appropriately, it was on Brownie Speaks that the gifted youngster shone most brilliantly during this session. After exposing his own theme to the usual opening chorus workout, he set sail for three choruses of unflagging improvisation in a peppering staccato style that bore the stamp of an individual personality.

At the time of the original release of Brownie Speaks, I commented in the notes: ”Clifford's melodic contours at times are reminiscent of Miles Davis, yet his tone and attack are blunter, more emphatic, and his harmonic imagination is in a class with that of the late, great Navarro. The continuity of his solo lines is astonishing, placing him at the very top rank of contemporary trumpet stylists."

The other five items in this set give Brownie Speaks plenty of competition. Each displays one facet or another of the style of this enterprising youth, then just 23 years old, who already had escaped from the narrow channels of imitative playing into the wider stream of musical originality.

De-Dah, like most of these performances, provides an overdue reminder of a fact that had escaped many musicians: the simple small-band format that made Dizzy and Bird famous just trumpet and alto unison theme, solo choruses, and theme to close - is still not stale. If it's done right, it can be as fresh and as stimulating as when bop brought it into being.

Cookin', after an introduction featuring Philly Joe, offers a 12-bar theme that departs from the conventional harmonic structure of this formula before easing into the solo passages. During the latter Donaldson, Hope, Brownie and Heath all show in turn that they are indeed "cookin'".

You Go To My Head illustrates how both Donaldson and Brown managed to blend their ideas with those of the writers of this timeless ballad. Finally Carving The Rock makes an interesting comparison with the version Elmo Hope recorded at another session, as a solo, also for Blue Note. Whether you heard it or not, you'll hear for yourself that this quintet version swings madly right up to the final flatted fifth.

Fortunately, it need not be said that Clifford Brown died unhonored or unsung. During his last two years, he enjoyed a degree of recognition almost commensurate with what he deserved. To point out that this recognition could have brought him to the pinnacle of jazz fame in a few years is to stress the obvious. Without pausing for platitudes, we prefer to pay a final sad homage to Clifford’s memory by listening once again, many times again, to these eloquent recorded testaments of his undisputed talent.

-LEONARD FEATHER

Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Remastering by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

CLIFFORD BROWN MEMORIAL ALBUM

The enclosed sessions comprise two early chapters in the tragically brief legacy of one of the greatest musicians in jazz history. They helped introduce trumpeter Clifford Brown to the world, contributed to his meteoric rise to prominence, and set an incredibly high standard for debut recordings that successive generations have found difficult to match.

Brown was 22 years old at the time. His only previous commercial recordings had been cut the previous year, during his tenure in rhythm and blues vocalist Chris Powell's Blue Flames. Yet Brown was already a word-of-mouth phenomenon among such musicians as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz and (by Powell's account) even the classical trumpeter Raphael Mendez. His reputation had been growing since the Wilmington, Delaware native first sat in with his idol Fats Navarro in 1949. Other club and jam-session encounters convinced all who heard Brown that he would be at the forefront of the generation that was coming of age in the early 1950s.

This promise was fulfilled once Brown left the Blue Flames in 1953 and began working with jazz groups on a regular basis. His regular gigs tended to be with the larger ensembles of Tadd Dameron and Lionel Hampton, where Brown was only one among a section of trumpeters; yet even alongside such impressive voices as Idrees Sulieman with Dameron and Art Farmer with Hampton, Brown's stunning technique, brilliant sound and depth of imagination stood out. His Blue Note recordings find the young genius surrounded by all-star ensembles worthy of his talent.

The two complete sessions included here were originally released on a pair of Blue Note 10" LP s. After Brown's death in an automobile accident in 1956, they were joined under the present title and album cover on 12" LP, where timing limitations forced the omission of "Bellarosa" and "Brownie Eyes." Subsequent reissues retrieved these titles, as well as unearthing three alternate takes from each session. In this collection, the master takes are heard in the order of recording, followed by the alternates.

The June 9, 1953 date was originally issued under the joint leadership of Brown and Lou Donaldson. The alto saxophonist had made his debut on Blue Note in the previous year, charting a course that Brown would follow on the label by appearing first with more established players (in Donaldson's case, Milt Jackson and Thelonious Monk) and then getting his own date. Donaldson was a good match for Brown in both his fluency and his avoidance of the drug-and-alcohol-related problems that plagued far too many musicians in this period.

This was also both the Blue Note debut and the first jazz recording session for pianist Elmo Hope, who like Brown had previously been heard in an r&b context. Hope's musical dues had been paid in the combo of trumpeter/vocalist Joe Morris, whose working group at one time or another also contained the remainder of the present rhythm section, Percy Heath and Philly Joe Jones. Since Hope was not the clean liver that Brown and Donaldson were, he had paid non-musical dues as well, which are alluded to in the composition "Carvin' The Rock" (i.e., doing timee in the Riker's Island jail where New York City's drug offenders were frequently incarcerated). The Hope/Heath/Jones trio was back in the studio for Blue Note when it recorded Hope's debut LP in the label's "New Faces New Sounds" series.

"Bellarosa" is the first of three Hope compositions, a memorable medium-tempo melody with a strong written bridge. Donaldson plays a personal chorus primarily free of Parker references before Brown displays his strong time, expert tonguing and fertile imagination. Hope is out of Bud Powell, but with more jagged edges. On the final chorus, Brown blows again at the bridge.

"Carvin' The Rock" was co-composed by Hope and Sonny Rollins, and has an uncommon 16-8-12 blowing chorus. It is heard here in three versions, with the first alternate having been cut immediately before the master, while the second alternate was done after the other material at the session had been recorded. Hope clearly was most familiar with the form, and gets two full solo choruses as well as the bridge of each theme chorus. Donaldson does his most provocative harmonic work on the master take, which also has Jones's best drumming and extremely agile playing from Brown. Note how strong Brown's lip remained on the second alternate from the session's end. Another version was also cut at Hope's trio session.

"Cookin'," like the previous tune, is introduced by Jones; but this time the form is the more familiar 12-bar blues, albeit with a Latin kick. Donaldson's tune is heard in two takes, with the master cut after the alternate. The composer and Brown get three choruses each, separated by two from Hope, with Heath following the trumpet with one chorus. Brown upstages everyone on the master with his affirmative lines. The two horns are in total synch here and throughout on theme choruses - this was clearly a well-matched unit.

"Brownie Speaks" is a brisk, tricky original by the trumpeter that inspires his best work of the session. He sails nimbly through the chord changes, linking stanzas with ingenious turnbacks that are the mark of the harmonically sophisticated modernist. The rhythm section is also a major contributor, especially while Hope is feeding those rich chords behind the horn soloists.

Hope's melodic idea yielded the title "De-Dah," which features wonderfully demonstrative Jones drumming on the ensemble choruses and an excellent opening solo by the composer. The strong medium groove of this piece finds each soloist in a relaxed and highly melodic frame of mind, with Brown taking the extra chorus in this instance.

A written introduction weaves the horns together briefly before Donaldson takes over and states the theme of "You Go To My Head." He quickly moves into boppish flourishes, broken by reflective moments on the bridge, and his sense of drama ties the alto chorus together nicely. Trumpet enters at the second bridge, with the rhythm section suggesting double time; but Brown holds the lyrical focus, and proceeds to blow even more brilliantly once Donaldson returns with an obligato.

Brown, Heath and Jones were back in the studio two days later with Tadd Dameron's Nonet for Prestige, while Brown and Heath also participated in J.J. Johnson's first Blue Note session (Contained on The Eminent Jay Jay Johnson Volume 1 in the RVG Series) on June 22. It was at this last session that Alfred Lion offered the trumpeter a date of his own, which was held on August 28. By that time, Brown had become a member of Lionel Hampton's orchestra. He included another Hampton sideman, Gigi Gryce, on alto sax and flute, as well as Charlie Rouse on tenor. Heath was again on bass, together with one of his partners in the recently-formed Modern Jazz Quartet, pianist John Lewis. The drummer was Art Blakey, who would feature Brown on the memorable A Night at Birdland recordings for the label six months later.

The added orchestral potential of a sextet is quickly displayed on "Wail Bait," the first of two compositions by one of Brown's mates in the Hampton trumpet section, Quincy Jones. Another obvious difference from the previous session is the gentler, more thematically sustained support from Lewis's piano, The master, cut after the alternate, has stronger solos all around as Lewis and Gryce split a chorus, Brown gets one to himself (launched by an ensemble interlude) and Rouse follows on the last 16 bars of the structure. Brown's sound and execution are even more assured than on the previous date.

"Hymn Of The Orient" was tackled next, and a master take resulted, with the alternate produced (like the second "Carvin' the Rock" alternate) at the conclusion of the session. Brown is brilliant, especially when the saxophones enter with the cyclical figure on the second chorus; then Rouse charges forward, yielding to a more ethereal Gryce at the bridge. Lewis plays a typically sly chorus, followed by one where Brown and Blakey converse amicably. The alternate is notable for Heath's more prominent bowing behind the piano introduction and a superior Rouse solo.

"Brownie Eyes" is a beautiful Quincy Jones ballad that finds Gryce on flute in the ensemble. Brown had a gift for balancing tenderness and self-assurance that made him one of the most complete ballad players. He does some impressive double-timing on the second chorus, after Gryce has played an inventive 16 bars on alto.

"Cherokee" was among Brown's favorite chord sequences, one he would revisit while in Paris under the title "Brown Skin" with an orchestra under Gryce's leadership, as well as on a February 1955 recording by the quintet he co-led with Max Roach. Of the two versions here, the master take (cut after the alternate) is faster and altogether more inventive, with Blakey obviously recognizing a soulmate in the confident young trumpeter. Their exchanges take the music right to the boiling point before Brown settles back into the familiar Ray Noble melody on the final half-chorus.

Flute and bowed bass set up "Easy Living," which Brown turns into one of the all-time great ballad performances. For all his energy and imagination, he shows great respect for the melody, allowing key notes to glow. His repetition of the "so in love" phrase during the performance's final four bars is the perfect summation.

"Minor Mood" is Brown's composition, with an uncommon melody on altered blues changes after Lewis's introduction. The assertive attitude of the trumpet solo and in Blakey's support is contrasted effectively by Lewis's more considered camping, which sustains its interesting counterlines behind Gryce and Rouse (in the latter's most characteristic solo of the date). As usual, Lewis gets a lot of meaning out of a few notes before the ensemble concludes with new melodic material.

The final two years of Brown's abbreviated career were spent in partnership with Max Roach and produced his most famous recordings, yet the present performances are in no way inferior. On the contrary, they announced the musician Blue Note justifiably hailed when the sextet session was first released as a New Star on the Horizon a star that unfortunately shone all too briefly.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2001