Bones for Brownie

Jazz greats pay tribute to the tragically brief career of Clifford Brown.

by Shaun Brady

NOT FORGOTTEN: Clifford Brown died in a car accident on the PA Turnpike in 1956. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

When Clifford Brown died in 1956 in an accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, he was four months away from his 26th birthday. His tenure as a recording artist had encompassed a mere four years. For most musicians, the tragic brevity and abrupt cessation of Brown's career wouldn't have provided enough time to even find their own voice, let alone establish themselves in the pantheon of jazz legends and become an influence to the generations of instrumentalists to follow. Jazz is a music that expands via gradual evolution and discovery, with innovations developed over decades — a span that Brown simply didn't have.

Listening back to Brown's recordings more than half a century after his death, there's a sense of urgency to his every solo, an impatient invention, as if every note is being blown on borrowed time. Certainly, that impression is colored by hindsight, a knowledge of his fate that the trumpeter simply couldn't have had. But it's also the result of a musical strategist whose control of his horn allowed him an unfettered pathway from inspiration to expression and who, in the space of a few short years, managed to say enough for a lifetime.

Enough, in fact, that the University of the Arts is hosting a three-day symposium and concert series honoring the Wilmington-born trumpeter. Beginning on what would have been Brown's 78th birthday, the event is a meeting of minds and music, appropriate for a man whose precision-guided emotionality onstage evidenced the calculating mind of a mathematician and chess aficionado.

During the day, the university will host a series of lectures on topics ranging from his improvisational style to his appearance on the Soupy Sales Show, and panels bringing together family and friends, scholars and contemporaries, including a discussion between legendary saxophonists Benny Golson, Lou Donaldson and Jimmy Heath. At night they'll host a concert series, with performances by contemporaries Golson and Donaldson, disciples like Marcus Belgrave and Terence Blanchard, and Philly's Lars Halle Jazz Orchestra, performing a newly commissioned piece by composer John Fedchock.

The centerpiece of the symposium is the premierè of Brownie Speaks, a new documentary by UArts faculty member and pianist Don Glanden. The university sees the event as a springboard toward establishing a comprehensive archive of jazz history in Philadelphia and beyond.

When asked why so much attention should be paid to a musician whose career and life were so brief, Glanden explains, "I have a philosophy of determining whether a jazz musician is historically important. It's the three I's: individuality, influence and innovation. I think that those three qualities exist in some combination in every historically important jazz musician. And you have to say that Clifford was highly individual and extraordinarily influential."

"I hear his influence in just about every young trumpet player I hear," agrees Lou Donaldson, whose performance, on his 82nd birthday, is particularly appropriate given that he co-led Brown's first session as a leader. Prior to that June 1953 date Brown had recorded with Philly R&B act Chris Powell and his Blue Flames, with whom he was gigging when Donaldson spotted him.

"I'd heard about him, so I went to see the band," Donaldson recalls. "And he was hurt, so he was playing piano, not trumpet. But I got him to run over a couple of tunes with me on the side. He sounded a lot to me like Fats Navarro, which it was amazing to me because he was so young then. To be able to play that way, as young as he was, it was impressive. You could see he had a lot of talent. So I talked him into coming to New York to make this record."

The two re-teamed the following year under the leadership of Art Blakey in a proto-Messengers lineup for A Night at Birdland, which Donaldson calls "probably the greatest live bebop record ever recorded."

Donaldson still sounds awed when talking about Brown's talents. "He had such good command of the horn at that age. He could play all over the horn and never miss a note. He had no limitations. At least, I didn't find any."

Sharing the bill with Donaldson that night will be Philly-born saxophonist Benny Golson, whose oft-recorded "I Remember Clifford" has done almost as much as Brown's own music to keep the trumpeter's memory alive.

"What a lovely young man" was Golson's immediate response when asked about Brown last year. "He never had anything bad to say about anybody. Just the antithesis; he would rave about something that somebody else was doing. But when he put his trumpet up to his mouth, this nice, quiet man could become a raging tiger or the world's greatest lover at will."

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Why live life at full price?

Golson was working at the Apollo Theater with Dizzy Gillespie when they learned of Brown's death. "We were so saddened that when we got to Los Angeles the next week I decided I would write a tune in memory of my dear friend," Golson says. "Little did I know he didn't need any help from me. The things he left behind as a harbinger of what could have happened had he not been killed were amazing."

The music that Brown left behind has been particularly important to his son. Clifford Brown Jr., who will serve as the symposium's master of ceremonies, was only 6 months old when his father died, and has no actual memories of the man. "I've talked to my father's friends, relatives, colleagues, all kinds of people through the years in an effort to get to know him better," Brown says, "but nothing has truly opened the door to who he was like listening to his music."

Beyond just introducing a son to a father he's never known, Brown's music has also served a role as something of a surrogate. "There's times when things have been really, really good in my life, and I've used his music to celebrate. There's been other times when I've truly been struggling, just barely making it, and the music has helped me get through that, too. It's been present for me as long as I can remember."

As a jazz DJ in San Francisco, Brown has seen firsthand the impact his father's music has had on listeners, which may help explain why it's still being discussed five decades later.

"From a technical standpoint there hasn't been much like it in the history of music, but the kinds of emotions that it's able to evoke in people are just stunning to me — from joy to sadness, it's so beautiful. I think that's why people are studying it, trying to figure out 'How did this guy do this?'"

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

"Brownie Speaks," Thu.-Sat., Oct. 30-Nov. 1, daytime seminars free with pre-registration, concerts $7.50-$35, University of the Arts, 215-717-6127 (information), 215-336-1254 (tickets), uarts.edu.