Track Listing

1. Delilah
2. Parisian Thoroughfare
3. Daahoud
4. Joy Spring
5. Jordu
6. Blues Walk, The
7. What Am I Here For?
8. These Foolish Things
9. Blues Walk (alternative take), The
10. Daahoud (alternative take)
11. Joy Spring (alternative take)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7924 in Music
• Brand: Max
• Released on: 2000-02-29
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Amazon.com
Many a young musician has been sabotaged by his own considerable abilities. So caught up are they in technical execution that they give elements such as emotion and taste short shrift. Trumpeter Clifford Brown was a musical dynamo, a man who was capable of playing many instruments well and who possessed supreme natural instincts and boundless energy. Brown painstakingly practiced and perfected his technique, but when practice time gave way to playing time--there was no other time for him--Brown's command was so deeply ingrained that he was free to concentrate on those other elements: emotion and taste. This reissue of the 1954 recorded debut of the Brown-Roach quintet stands as one of the most exciting works in all of jazz, and it plays as if the ensemble knew it at the time. Brown's trumpet work is fiery, confident, and nimble, tempered slightly by Miles Davis's lyricism; his tone is bright and bold, but the icing on the cake is the joy and tenderness that surface. Drummer Max Roach was already a bop veteran when he formed this groundbreaking hard-bop band and he prances like a dancer throughout. Harold Land's grounded, relaxed, grainy tenor is the perfect yin to Brown's yang. Brown emerges here as the crucial link between Dizzy Gillespie and basically all hot trumpeters to follow, even though he was not yet 24 when he made these recordings. Among the four extra cuts on this remastered reissue are alternate versions of "Daahoud" and "Joy Spring," two Brown compositions that have become hard-bop cornerstones. --Marc Greilsamer

Customer Reviews

Truly a masterpiece from a most underrated artist in jazz
With Miles Davis succeeding so well in the 1950's and "out performing" any other trumpeter in that decade some forget about some of the other fine brilliant trumpets that were in the shadows, I'm sorry to say, of Miles Davis. Some of these trumpeters included Kenny Dorham, Dizzy Gillespie, and of course Clifford Brown. A big influence to many brilliant trumpeters such as Lee Morgan, who actually modeled his sound after Clifford Brown, Clifford Brown had a new sound, a bold screamin' sound that was essential to the movement into the more "modern" jazz at that point. In this album he is joined by one of the finest hard core drummers of the time, Max Roach, Harold Land, another truly outspoken artist, on tenor, George Morrow on bass and Richie Powell on piano. Every single cut on this album are just true jewels. This is a must for any one unfamiliar with Clifford Brown.

About as good as it gets
The playing, song selection and, thanks to the fantastic 24 bit remastering job, the recording quality is about as good as it gets. When you consider what the engineers must have started with on this 1954 recording what they have accomplished isn't much less than a miracle. Absolute state-of-the-art sound! This album joins a small number of lesser known masterpeices in the jazz field like Serge Challoff's Blue Serge and Chico Freeman's Spitit Sensitive at the very top of the heap.

Hard Bop moved into contemporary lyricism with this group
Clifford Brown - a name not well known today, but the master of the trumpet in 1955 and 1956 - until his very premature demise at the age of 26 in an auto crash.

This fellow played the trumpet like he copyrighted the term "stretch-out". He blows away the constraints of bop. How he manages to rise to the heights of lyricism, especially with Max Roach keeping time with his lock-step snares and tom-toms, is beyond me. Listen to how he makes musical space in his playing! There is nothing remotely like him prior to 1954 - but Lee Morgan and Freddy Hubbard would never have played like they did without him.