Clifford Brown

Compiled from two 1953 Blue Note sessions, this record was issued as a memorial album in 1956, the year he died. Already, at the time of his first recordings, you can hear his fully formed voice.

• In “Brownie Speaks,” you can hear the technique of crisply separating each note with the tongue (tonguing), even at fast tempos. Notes that roll out like beads instead of blurring together are his first hallmark.
• In the slow ballad “Easy Living,” listen for the round, warm tone of his long notes, and the restraint with which he rations the technique of gently trembling a note (vibrato).
• The sextet (six-piece) ensemble, three horns stacking harmonies to sing the theme, gives way to the solos. The contrast between arranged ensemble and improvised solo is the architecture of Blue Note recordings from this period.
• The drums on the two sessions were played by Philly Joe Jones and Art Blakey respectively. It is worth comparing how each drummer drives the same trumpeter from behind.

A live set from a New York club, played with abandon a few months after he was freed from the Hampton band's recording ban. It is regarded as the starting point of hard bop and of the Jazz Messengers.

• The opening introduction by emcee Pee Wee Marquette and the murmur of the crowd — the atmosphere of a live recording Rudy Van Gelder made in the club itself survives intact.
• Horace Silver's “Split Kick” alternates between a Latin rhythm and swing that rolls four even beats (the push-and-pull feel of lightly dragging the back half of each beat). Listen to how Blakey's drums change the whole game the moment the rhythm shifts.
• “Once in a While” is a ballad in which Brown stands alone out front. The passage where, within the slow tempo, he suddenly drives the line at twice the speed (double time) is often cited as the high point of the record.
• In Dizzy Gillespie's “A Night in Tunisia” and Parker's “Confirmation,” you can hear Brown reworking his bebop elders' tunes in his own voice.
• Blakey's rapid snare-drum roll that pushes the soloist from behind (press roll) sounds like a signal marking the turn of each chorus.

His first album, recorded in Los Angeles in the year he formed the quintet in the West and married. It includes “Joy Spring,” named for his pet name for his wife.

• “Joy Spring” is in a form that states an eight-bar strain twice, passes through a different strain, and returns to the first (32-bar AABA). The second A moves into a key a half step higher to sing the same melody again, and the heart of it is the way Brown's solo glides across that modulation.
• “Daahoud” is a tune whose chords change very quickly. The precision of the theme ensemble, with trumpet and tenor locked together as one body, shows what defined this quintet.
• In the latter part of the 12-bar blues “Blues Walk,” Brown, Land and Roach exchange short solos a few bars at a time (trading). Listen to the conversational breath of it, like remarks passed back and forth.
• Roach's drums do more than keep time; they converse like a melody through cymbals and snare. In the introduction to Bud Powell's “Parisian Thoroughfare,” there is even a passage that seems to imitate the noise of city streets.

The most celebrated of the collaborations Shad arranged outside the quintet. It was first issued under the title “Sarah Vaughan,” and Vaughan is said to have held this record especially dear.

• In “Lullaby of Birdland,” Vaughan uses the vocal technique of improvising like an instrument on meaningless syllables (scat). The passages where trumpet·flute·tenor and voice trade back and forth are the center of the song.
• On a slow number like “April in Paris,” Brown slips short answering phrases (obbligato) in behind the vocal. Listen to the restraint: he fills only the places where the singer's breath runs out, and never covers the song.
• The band is a small combo, and every track is given generous length. The easy flow laid down by Jimmy Jones on piano and Roy Haynes on drums gives the date the loose, free air of a jam session.
• Vaughan's wide range and dark timbre are so close to Brown's round trumpet tone that there are moments when the two sounds blend into a single mass.

This is the album on which the quintet, its lineup now settled, plays its tightest ensemble. Worked-out arrangements and incendiary improvisation coexist on a single record.

• After the quintet's arranged introduction, “Cherokee” tears off at a blistering tempo. Brown's solo is widely used as a study piece that trumpeters transcribe and practice.
• “Take the ‘A’ Train” (composed by Billy Strayhorn), the signature tune of Duke Ellington's orchestra, is framed by an opening and an ending in which the instruments mimic a train pulling out and coming to a stop.
• Brown's own “Sandu” is a blues at a relaxed medium tempo. Listen to how he chooses the dark notes of the blues over the unhurried push and pull (groove) of the rhythm section.
• Brown's tune “George's Dilemma” is built to alternate Latin rhythm and swing, and each time the rhythm shifts, Roach's drums change color.

This is a ballad album on which a man who made his name with speed and technique stakes everything on melody alone. It belongs to the meeting of jazz and string orchestra that followed Parker's recordings with strings.

• Improvisation is pared to a minimum, and the melody is sung almost as written. Listen for the way he interprets each tune through nothing more than tone and the small ornaments that lightly color the ends of his notes.
• Neal Hefti's string arrangements never step forward; they lay down a backdrop. Beneath them, Richie Powell, George Morrow, Max Roach, and Barry Galbraith on guitar hold the beat.
• On “Yesterdays” and “Stardust,” what stands out is the full tone of his middle register and the breath that carries long notes without a waver.
• All twelve tracks are slow standards. Their consistent mood comes alive when you listen to the album straight through rather than one track at a time.

This is the signature record of the quintet with Rollins, and a document made only months before Brown and Richie Powell died.

• “What Is This Thing Called Love” opens with Richie Powell's arrangement. The technique of dressing a familiar tune's chords in different harmonies (reharmonization) makes the song strange and new.
• The contrast between Brown and Rollins is the heart of it. The trumpet's smooth, precise line and the tenor's way of splitting a theme, twisting it, and building it back up come one after the other.
• On the up-tempo “I'll Remember April,” Roach's drum solo splits the beat apart and gathers it back together, shaped like a single story.
• Richie Powell's own “Powell's Prances” and “Gertrude's Bounce” show that he was growing, at this time, into the quintet's composer and arranger.