I Remember Clifford (the Jazztet’s version)

The Jazztet: Benny Golson (tenor sax), Art Farmer (trumpet), Curtis Fuller (trombone), McCoy Tyner (piano), Addison Farmer (bass) and Lex Humphries (drums). From the album Meet the Jazztet (1960).

The death of Clifford Brown in a traffic accident on the Pennsylvania freeway on a rainy night in June 1956 deprived jazz of a trumpeter that many considered the best of his generation. At just 25 years of age, Brown had already acquired a great deal of experience and was characterized by his warm tone, clarity of execution and melodic inventiveness.

Other musicians had died at an early age because of drugs, but Brown avoided narcotics, rarely drank and enjoyed a stable home life. Golson was a close friend and had worked together in Lionel Hampton’s big band in 1953. He later described how he was agonizing when writing each note and it took several weeks before he could finish a song that was both an appropriate memorial and captured the personality musical of the deceased trumpeter.

The theme is played by Farmer with Golson and Fuller making a sound mattress underneath. The emotional charge is tremendous, describing the mourning for the death of a beloved and admired person. Farmer continues playing a solo full of feeling that denotes a deep sadness with a lyrical speech, a warm tone and sensitivity, and finally re-exposes the theme.