The title of this week's album—The Beginning and the End—suggests some division into two pieces, and after a first listen it isn't difficult to spot the seam joining the two. The album is roughly 35 minutes long, and in the first five minutes we've already knocked out the first two tracks ("I Come From Jamaica" and "Ida Red"): both are fun and catchy enough, but they're immediately old-fashioned to my ear, and not in a flattering way. Part of it is the lyrics ("I come from Jamaica / Jamaica she my home / Fish and rice / VEEERY NICE!"), but there's also something unmistakeably cheesy about them that's a dead giveaway—though to dissect these two Chris Powell songs start-to-end would rather miss the point; they're only included here as vehicles for the hot Clifford Brown trumpet solos they feature.¹ The remaining 30 minutes, by contrast, consists of three extended bebop performances (including a rendition of "Donna Lee," which we first heard on Jaco Pastorius's eponymous album) that truly allow Brown to shine. These tracks most remind me of the Parker "album" we previously heard—at that time I wasn't particularly entranced by bebop overall, but for some reason this week it grabbed my attention. Maybe it's the casual club setting of the later session, but these three tracks really come alive; I keenly feel I'm sitting at a crowded table in a smoke-filled room, surrounded by patrons equally excited and dazzled by the dynamic, unpredictable solos Brown is belting out on his horn.

Now that we've distinguished the "beginning" from the "end," what do they represent, exactly? Sadly, there is no clever metaphor here: these are Clifford Brown's earliest and latest known studio recordings. In 1952, Brown recorded some tracks with Chris Powell & The Five Blue Flames; less than four years later he recorded a live set at Music City Club in Philadelphia;² and on a dark night in June 1956, Brown was killed in a car crash. He was just 25 years old.

Though Brown's career was short, it undoubtedly left an outsized impact on jazz—even within his own lifetime he was seen as a pioneering figure of bebop and a distinctively talented trumpet player. Brown was best known for his quintet with Max Roach, but he also played with Art Blakey, before Blakey's group even was the Jazz Messengers. As one example of Brown's legacy, consider Freddie Hubbard: Hubbard (a fellow trumpet player) joined the Messengers in 1961, and one has to imagine the works of his instrumental forebear were on his mind. In fact, should you wish to better understand how Brown influenced Hubbard, allow me to refer you to either James Moore's 366-page doctoral thesis on the subject, or this 2-minute AI slop video³ with two views (one of which is me); two sources that I presume are of roughly equal scholarly value.

To study the history of jazz is to become acquainted with a litany of individual calamities: all too often, drink and drugs made quick work of the most promising jazzmen. But among those many tragedies, the loss of Brown makes us bristle with particular indignation—a rising genius who lived clean in an era when few did, his time upon this stage cut short without rhyme or reason. We can only be grateful that on his way out he left us these few treasures to remember him by.

Favourite track: Walkin’