Clifford Brown

American Jazz Trumpet Player (October 30, 1930, Wilmington, DE –- June 26, 1956, Wilmington, DE).

Brown was a highly rated and influential trumpet player who died at the age of 25 in a car crash, leaving behind only four years' worth of recordings. He managed to accomplish a great deal in the short time he had.

He was encouraged by both Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Navarro, that latter of which was Brown's main influence. He performed with R&B bandleader 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.

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.

He won the Down Beat critics' poll for the 'New Star of the Year' in 1954; he was inducted into the Down Beat 'Jazz Hall of Fame' in 1972 in the critics' poll.