David Kraus: The Listening Room
Joy Spring
David Kraus ~ electric jazz guitars (overdubbed)Return to Tunes
The song "Joy Spring" composed by the ledgendary trumpeter Clifford Brown in the early 1950's, is one
of my favorite tunes to play and improvise with. This arrangement like the other jazz electric duets I placed in this section was recorded in 1990 in my home studio on a small Fostex tape machine with me playing both parts overbubbed. The sound quality is no doubt not as clean as today's digital technology, but regardless it's the music that counts and I'm happy with what came out. I wanted to write a bit about Clifford Brown for background of the music, but also as a tribute in a way because he was a great artist who lived such a short life and yet gave us so much.Clifford Brown (October 30, 1930 – June 26, 1956), aka "Brownie," was an influential and highly rated American jazz trumpeter. He died aged 25, leaving behind only four years' worth of recordings. Nonetheless, he had a considerable influence on later jazz trumpet players, including Donald Byrd, Lee Morgan, Booker Little, Freddie Hubbard, Valery Ponomarev, and Wynton Marsalis. He won the Down Beat critics' poll for the 'New Star of the Year' in 1954 and was inducted into the Down Beat 'Jazz Hall of Fame' in 1972 in the critics' poll.
Brown was born in Wilmington, Delaware. After briefly attending Delaware State University and Maryland State College (University of Maryland, Eastern Shore), he moved into playing music professionally, where he quickly became one of the most highly regarded trumpeters in jazz. His style was influenced by Fats Navarro, sharing Navarro's virtuosic technique and brilliance of invention. His sound was warm and round, and notably consistent across the full range of the instrument. He could articulate every note, even at the high tempos which seemed to present no difficulty to him; this served to enhance the impression of his speed of execution. His sense of harmony was highly developed, enabling him to deliver bold statements through complex harmonic progressions (chord changes), and embodying the linear, "algebraic" terms of bebop harmony. As well as his up-tempo prowess, he could express himself deeply in a ballad performance. He performed with Chris Powell, Tadd Dameron, Lionel Hampton, and Art Blakey before forming his own group with Max Roach. The Clifford Brown & Max Roach Quintet was a high water mark of the hard bop style. The group's pianist, Richie Powell (younger brother of Bud), contributed original compositions, as did Brown himself. The partnership of Brown's trumpet with Harold Land's tenor saxophone made for a very strong front line. Teddy Edwards briefly replaced Land before Sonny Rollins took over for the remainder of the group's existence. In their hands the bebop vernacular reached a peak of inventiveness.
The clean-living Brown has been cited as perhaps breaking the influence of heroin on the jazz world, a model established by Charlie Parker. Clifford stayed away from drugs and was not fond of alcohol. In June 1956, Brown and Richie Powell were being driven from Philadelphia to Chicago by Powell's wife Nancy for the band's next appearance. While driving on a rainy night on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, west of Bedford, she lost control of the car and it went off the road. All three were killed in the resulting crash. Brown is buried in Mt. Zion Cemetery, in Wilmington, Delaware. It is a devastating loss to the music world and Western art culture in general that he died so young like too many others we all remember with a mixture of fondness and sadness.
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