The Album
On August 14, 1954 (the LP's liner notes claim October 14, but discographers have established August), EmArcy A&R chief Bob Shad staged a Norman Granz/JATP-style public jam session in Hollywood, renting a small auditorium, selling free admission, and rolling tape on the starriest band he could assemble - the whole thing thrown together on the spot after a Clifford Brown/Max Roach record date the same week. Three great trumpets - the then-ascendant Clifford Brown, high-note phenomenon Maynard Ferguson, and the Duke Ellington-bound Clark Terry - traded chorus after chorus over a rhythm section anchored by Max Roach, with Harold Land and Herb Geller on reeds; Dinah Washington, whose own set from the same concert became the companion LP 'Dinah Jams' (MG 36000), drops in for a luminous 'Darn That Dream.' The album captures Brown in the earliest flush of his brief, blazing career - within two years he would be the most influential trumpeter since Dizzy Gillespie and, by his death at 25 in June 1956, a jazz immortal. 'Move' is one of the great trumpet-battle performances on record, and the closing ballad medley showcases Richie Powell, Terry, Geller, and Brown at their most lyrical. Billboard praised it on release in February 1955 ('it's the three trumpets which walk off with top honors'), and AllMusic's Scott Yanow calls it 'a brilliant set that is highly recommended.' It remains one of the essential documents of the jam-session tradition and of Brown's西海岸 period.