Clifford Brown & Max Roach

Two bandleaders

Clifford Benjamin Brown was born on October 30, 1930 in Wilmington, Delaware. After a car crash in June 1950 Dizzy Gillespie visited him in the hospital and encouraged him, and in May 1952 he played a week at Club Harlem with Charlie Parker. Maxwell Lemuel Roach, born on January 10, 1924 in North Carolina and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, had been a bebop drummer since the 1940s and in 1952 co-founded Debut Records with Charles Mingus. From March 1954 Brown was in the Los Angeles area, co-leading a quintet with Roach.

The first line-up was Brown on trumpet, Harold Land on tenor saxophone, Richie Powell on piano, George Morrow on bass and Roach on drums. Sonny Rollins replaced Land in 1955. On July 12, 1954, between sessions, Brown recorded "Daahoud" with a septet, with Stu Williamson, Zoot Sims, Bob Gordon, Russ Freeman, Joe Mondragon and Shelly Manne, arranged by Jack Montrose, for Pacific Jazz at Capitol's Melrose studios.

EmArcy

The quintet's first EmArcy sessions were on August 2, 3, 5 and 6, 1954 at Capitol Studios in Hollywood, produced by Bob Shad. They gave a 10-inch record, Clifford Brown & Max Roach (EmArcy MG 26043, December 1954), and Brown and Roach Incorporated (EmArcy MG 36008, 1955). Study in Brown was recorded on February 23 to 25, 1955 and includes "Cherokee", whose Brown solo is described as among the most acclaimed in jazz. The quintet played the Newport Jazz Festival on July 16, 1955 with Rollins.

Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street was recorded on January 4 and February 16 and 17, 1956, the last record the quintet made, with Rollins and Powell on piano and celesta. Brown died on June 26, 1956, aged 25, together with Powell, on the way to an engagement in Chicago. Roach kept a similar group with Kenny Dorham, then Booker Little, George Coleman and Ray Bryant. He died on August 16, 2007, aged 83.

Legacy

The New York Times called the group perhaps the definitive bop group until Brown's death. Benny Golson wrote "I Remember Clifford" in 1957 and Jon Hendricks added lyrics, and Brown won the DownBeat Critics' Poll New Star of the Year in 1954 and entered the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1972. Roach entered it in 1980, received a MacArthur fellowship in 1988 and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award in 2008, and influenced Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette, Billy Cobham and John Bonham; PBS American Masters broadcast Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes in 2023. The only known film of Brown, Soupy's On, with two tunes, was found in the 1990s. Scott Yanow named Basin Street one of 17 essential hard bop recordings.