Clifford Brown

Every time I put on a Clifford Brown record, I'm struck by the same bittersweet feeling: this guy packed a lifetime of genius into four short years of recordings. He came out of Wilmington, Delaware, studied at Delaware State University, and by the time the bebop world caught up with him he was already leagues ahead — a trumpet voice so warm and melodically inventive that Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie both spoke of him with outright reverence. The fact that he was also a genuinely clean-living, drug-free musician in a scene drowning in hard times makes the story even more poignant. Standards like Joy Spring and Daahoud feel effortless, joyful, inevitable — and then you remember he was gone at 25 in a Pennsylvania highway accident in 1956. Jazz didn't just lose a player; it lost a whole future.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Clifford Brown

Name (Japanese)

クリフォード・ブラウン

Reading

くりふぉーど・ぶらうん

Born

October 30, 1930 – June 26, 1956

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Horse

Origin

Wilmington, Delaware, United States

Occupation

trumpeter / composer / jazz musician / musician

High school

Howard High School of Technology

University

Delaware State University

• Official sitehttp://www.cliffordbrown.net/
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford%20Brown
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AF%E3%83%AA%E3%83%95%E3%82%A9%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89%E3%83%BB%E3%83%96%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A6%E3%83%B3
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q354490

Tags

• Delaware
• trumpeter
• composer
• jazz musician

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.