People who died before turning 30: Clifford Brown

In the early fifties, as bebop hardened up and the musicians turned from marijuana to heroin, there was Cliff Brown. Cliff was a wunderkind from Delaware, a kid so talented on trumpet he was sitting in with Max Roach and Fats Navarro while still studying math at the University of Maryland. Eventually, but quickly, he moved into music full-time, touring Europe with Lionel Hampton in 1951, where he made a name for himself by sitting in on numerous recording sessions with other artists.

In 1954 Cliff emerged as a leader in his own right, and two years later had released a couple of albums with Max Roach on drums. Stardom seemed inevitable. Along the way, he set a new standard for technical skill and improvisational virtuosity. Listening to him today is a mind-numbing experience, as his attack remains perfect while he machine-guns through scales and over chords that loop and turn and pinwheel, a technician slicing the riff into tiny perfect notes the way a chef might dice a carrot.

It couldn’t have been easy for him. Jazz at that time was full of heroin addicts and self-destructive personalities, and overdoses were claiming stars left and right. Charlie Parker, for instance, died in 1955 (aged 35). But Cliff was straight, never doing drugs, and claiming that even alcohol didn’t agree with him.

But wet roads ended up doing what drugs couldn't. In 1956, on his way to a show in Chicago, with his wife at the wheel, his car skidded off a wet Pennsylvania turnpike. Cliff, his wife, and a third passenger, also a musician, died on the scene. Clifford Brown was 25 years old.

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This is part of a planned series of short biographies of people who made a significant impact on their worlds, then died before turning 30.