LAST NIGHT A RECORD CHANGED MY LIFE
Brian Jackson
Gil Scott-Heron’s collaborator and more salutes Clifford Brown & Max Roach (EmArcy, 1954)
I was four or five when my parents put on
Clifford Brown & Max Roach.
They were always playing jazz at home and I took to it from an early age – Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis – but I distinctly remember sitting in front of my parents’ 15-inch speakers, rocking back and forth, to this: Joy Spring, Jordu, Duke Ellington’s What Am I Here For?.
But the song that really stayed with me and still does is Parisian Thoroughfare, their take on the Bud Powell standard.