Clifford Brown and Max Roach - Study in Brown (1982 Japanese Mercury Mono Vinyl LP)

Clifford Brown and Max Roach - Study in Brown | Vinyl LP - 1982 Japanese Mercury Mono Reissue (EVER-1005 M, Ever Bright Collection / The EmArcy Jazz Series, Nippon Phonogram)

• One of the defining hard bop records, captured across three days at Capitol Studios in New York in February 1955 with the Brown-Roach Quintet at the peak of its powers
• Brown’s solo on “Cherokee” is among the most celebrated in jazz, and his composition “Sandu” has been a standard repertoire piece for over half a century
• Japanese mono reissue preserving the original EmArcy mix, pressed by Nippon Phonogram in 1982 as part of the Ever Bright Collection series

Study in Brown was recorded on February 23, 24 and 25, 1955, and it is the album that defines what the Clifford Brown and Max Roach Quintet was. The programme is weighted toward band originals: four Brown compositions including the medium-tempo blues “Sandu” and the rapid-fire “Swingin’”, Richie Powell’s “Jacqui” and Harold Land’s “Lands End”, both of which became repertoire staples. The record opens with “Cherokee”, where Brown delivers a solo of such technical fluency and melodic invention that it became a benchmark for every hard bop trumpeter who followed. His tone is full and warm at every tempo, his ideas spilling forward with an ease that belies their complexity. Land’s tenor is leaner and cooler beside Brown’s exuberance, and the contrast gives the quintet its particular character. Powell, younger brother of Bud, comps with harmonic precision. George Morrow and Roach drive the whole thing with authority and swing. These were the first Brown-Roach Quintet sides recorded in New York, and you can hear a band that knows exactly what it is.

Sixteen months after these sessions, on June 26, 1956, Clifford Brown and Richie Powell were killed in a car accident. Brown was 25. He left behind barely four years of recordings, but those four years were enough to influence generations of trumpeters, from Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard to Woody Shaw and Wynton Marsalis. Study in Brown was originally released on EmArcy as MG-36037 in mono, and this 1982 Japanese pressing on the Ever Bright Collection series preserves that mono mix. The pressing is manufactured and distributed by Nippon Phonogram Co., Ltd., the Japanese arm of PolyGram, which by then held the Mercury/EmArcy catalogue. This is catalogue number EVER-1005 M.