BLP 5032

Clifford Brown - New Star On The Horizon

Released - 1953

Recording and Session Information

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
BN526-1 tk.13 Brownie Eyes
BN527-1 tk.21 Cherokee
BN528-0 tk.23 Easy Living
BN529-0 tk.24 Minor Mood

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Cherokee	Ray Noble	August 28 1953
Easy Living	Robin-Rainger	August 28 1953
Wail Bait	Quincy Jones	August 28 1953
Side Two
Minor Mood	Clifford Brown	August 28 1953
Hymn Of The Orient	Gigi Gryce	August 28 1953
Brownie Eyes	Quincy Jones	August 28 1953

Liner Notes

By LEONARD FEATHER

IF YOU have heard, bought and enjoyed the Jay Jay Johnson Sextet session (BLP 5028) or the Donaldson-Brown performances (BLP 5030) you are already familiar with the work of Clifford Brown, the 23-year-old trumpet ace from Wilmington, Del., who started his professional career in 1948 around Philadelphia.

Brownie is what might best be described as a fledgling in the jazz world. The dictionary defines a fledgling as "a young bird ready for flight." Brownie is as young as was Bird himself when the latter's first records earned nation- wide scrutiny; and Brownie was ready for flight — his first solo flight — when Blue Note Records decided to give him this session recently.

The date took place just a week before Brownie took off for Europe, as a member of that vast edifice built by the master of multiple decibels, the Lionel Hampton orchestra. Like Gigi Gryce, the alto saxophonist and fellow-Hamptonian whom Brownie pressed into service for this session, the young hornman found the occasions for expressing his individual personality few and far between in so large and monolithic an organization. The opportunity to record with a small, compact group, aimed at the creation of originality and relaxation rather than intensity and consternation, was a welcome change of setting for the two eager youngsters.

A third Hampton star also helped to mold this date. He had also been installed for some time in Hamp's trumpet section, but is perhaps known better as an arranger, and it is in the latter capacity that Quincy Jones, a new star from Boston, contributed two originals, Wail Bait and Brownie Eyes, for the Brown session.

Completing the front line is Charlie Rouse, a tenor man whom most fans will remember from the famous Tadd Dameron conclave that produced The Squirrel, Our Delight, Dameronia, etc. on BLP 5004. Charlie has also been heard in the orchestras of Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and others.

For rhythmic support, Brownie ensconced himself in a setting that would be hard to surpass for cohesive and persuasive finesse. On piano he selected John Lewis, one of the brightest minds in modern music and a former Gillespie pianist-arranger; on bass he used Percy Heath, brought back as a result of his happy cooperation with Brownie on BLP 5030; and the percussion was entrusted to Art Blakey, who was selected not long ago in the Down Beat critics' poll as the best new star in the brilliant bop generation of drummers.

Thus assured of an environment capable of stimulating him to maximum effort with a minimum of strain, Clifford Brown went to work; and from the first fragile notes of his opening solo chorus on Cherokee, with John Lewis providing a background "feed" in the form of the original Ray Noble melody, you can sense that things are going to work out swingingly.

As you might expect, Cherokee soars off at the usual wild tempo to which its jazz foster-parents have accustomed it, and provides an energetic challenge to Space Cadet Brown, who flies uninterruptedly until Art Blakey joins him for two choruses of what is known as "fours" — the increasingly popular custom among contemporary jazzmen of trading solo spots, four bars apiece. This continues until the ensemble goes into a repetition of the opening passage.

An immediate contrast is offered by the lovely standard tune Easy Living, showing Brownie at his most elegant in the ballad mood. John Lewis sketched out the opening and closing, with Gigi switching to flute.

Wail Bait, a melodic-style bop theme, has a fine chorus split between Gigi and John Lewis and some of Brownie's most elegant thoughts in a full chorus, plus 16 bars of Charlie Rouse followed by some neatly-etched ensemble playing.

On the second side, the Lewis keyboard provides a fragile, sensitive introduction before the sextet outlines Brownie's moderately paced Minor Mood. Also in a minor key, but more briskly performed, is Gigi's Hymn of the Orient, the second and third choruses of which 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 contributions, both in solos and sectional work, of Art Blakey on this item.

The side concludes with a pretty tune, Brownie Eyes, for which Brownie employs Gigi's flute in effective parenthetical comments behind his own delineation of the theme.

Altogether, this stacks up as a unique disc. As we mentioned in annotating Brownie's session with Lou Donaldson, his short career was interrupted for a full year (June 1950 to May 1951) by an automobile accident, and his experience after that was mostly with the Chris Powell band, which does not specialize in modern jazz. Whether the degree of his exposure to and immersion in modern sounds has affected his musical development is highly doubtful, for, as you can plainly hear, there emerges from these sides a mature and gifted musician. Clearly, the fledgling was ready to fly.

Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by JOHN HERMANSADER