Clifford Benjamin Brown^[1] (October 30, 1930 – June 26, 1956) was an American jazz trumpeter. He died at the age of 25 in a car accident,^[2]leaving behind four years’ worth of recordings. He was also a composer of note: his compositions “Sandu,” “Joy Spring,”^[3] and “Daahoud“^[4] have become jazz standards.^[5]

Brown won the Down Beat critics’ poll for New Star of the Year in 1954; he was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1972 in the critics’ poll.^[2] He influenced later jazz trumpeters such as Booker Little, Freddie Hubbard, and Lee Morgan.

Brown was born into a musical family in a progressive East-Side neighborhood of Wilmington, Delaware. His father organized his four youngest sons, including Clifford, into a vocal quartet. Around age ten, Brown started playing trumpet at school after becoming fascinated with the shiny trumpet his father owned. At age thirteen, upon entering senior high, his father bought him his own trumpet and provided him with private lessons. As a junior in high school, he received lessons from Robert Boysie Lowery and played in “a jazz group that Lowery organized.” He even began making trips to Philadelphia. Brown took pride in his neighborhood and earned a good education from Howard High. In June 1956, Brown and Richie Powell embarked on a drive to Chicago for their next appearance. Powell’s wife Nancy was at the wheel so that Clifford and Richie could sleep. While driving at night in the rain on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, west of Bedford, she is presumed to have lost control of the car, which went off the road, killing all three in the resulting crash. Brown is buried in Mt. Zion Cemetery, in Wilmington, Delaware.