music clip of the day

jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more

Tag: Clifford Brown

Monday, 1/10/11

Happy Birthday, Max!

No drummer is more clear, more precise, more melodic.

Max Roach, January 10, 1924-August 16, 2007

“The Third Eye,” live

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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“The Drum Also Waltzes” (Drums Unlimited), 1966

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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With Sonny Rollins (saxophone), “St. Thomas” (Saxophone Colossus), 1956

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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With Clifford Brown (trumpet), “Sweet Clifford” (Brown and Roach Incorporated), 1955

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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With Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet), Charlie Parker (saxophone), Bud Powell (piano), Charles Mingus (bass), “Salt Peanuts,” live, 1953

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

In this music, you have to find out who you are, what you feel, what you want to say. That’s one of the reasons that it’s so American. You have to be yourself.

That’s also one way jazz is different from classical music. In classical music, you learn to study and come up with the finest interpretation of a work that you can. That’s a different way of expressing your personality. You have to learn to use what’s written already to express yourself. In jazz, you have to learn to be who you are, and create the music from that.

—Max Roach (in Gene Santoro, Highway 61 Revisited [2004])

*****

radio

Today it’s all Max all day at WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University).


Saturday, 10/30/10

Happy Birthday, Brownie!

Clifford Brown, October 30, 1930-June 26, 1956

“Oh, Lady Be Good,” “Memories of You,” live (TV broadcast [Soupy’s On, Detroit]), 1955

*****

Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet (Clifford Brown, trumpet; Max Roach, drums; Sonny Rollins, tenor saxophone; Richie Powell, piano; George Morrow, bass)

Live, “Get Happy”

*****

Live, Virginia (Norfolk, Continental Restaurant), 6/18/1956 (Last Concert)

“You Go To My Head”

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“What’s New”

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lagniappe

Don’t take a trumpet player, man. You won’t need one after you hear this young cat, Clifford Brown.

Charlie Parker (to Art Blakey, when he was going to work in Philadelphia in the early 1950s)

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Out in California, we had a house, and we had a piano and vibes as well as trumpet and drums. Brownie could play all these instruments, you know. I would go out of the house and come back, and he would be practicing on anything, drums, vibes, anything. He loved music.

Max Roach

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He was so well-rounded in all music. He liked Miles, Trane—who was very young then—and Louis Armstrong, and Lee Morgan, who spent alot of time with Clifford in Philly. Eric Dolphy was another good friend of ours. Music was his first love; I was his second, and math was his third. He was a wizard with figures and numbers; he used to play all kinds of mathematical games. . . .

There was only one time I didn’t travel with him. Our child, Clifford Jr., had been born, and I hadn’t taken him home yet to see the family. So Clifford said okay, and he put us on the plane; and of course that was when he was in the car accident and was killed. It was our second wedding anniversary and my 22nd birthday.

Larue Brown Watson

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Without Brownie, it would be hard to imagine the existence of Lee Morgan or Freddie Hubbard or Booker Little or Woody Shaw or Wynton Marsalis.

Michael Cuscuna

*****

radio

Today, at WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University), it’s all Brownie, (almost) all day. (This birthday celebration will be interrupted in the middle of the day for coverage of the Columbia/Yale football game.)