Brownie: Homage to Clifford Brown is a 1995 studio album

Studio album

A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...

 by Helen Merrill

Helen Merrill

Helen Merrill is an internationally known jazz vocalist.Merrill's recording career has spanned six decades and she is popular with fans of jazz in Japan and Italy as well as in her native United States...

, recorded in tribute to the trumpeter Clifford Brown

Clifford Brown

Clifford Brown , aka "Brownie," was an influential and highly rated American jazz trumpeter. He died aged 25, leaving behind only four years' worth of recordings...

.

Merrill had recorded an album with Brown

Helen Merrill (album)

Helen Merrill is the debut studio album by Helen Merrill, accompanied by trumpeter Clifford Brown.Merrill recorded a tribute album to Brown in 1995.-Reception:...

 in 1956.

Reception

The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow awarded the album four and a half stars and said that "Throughout the often emotional date, Helen Merrill is heard in top form, giving plenty of feeling to the lyrics while leaving room for the guest trumpeters".

Track listing

1. "Your Eyes" (Chick Corea
   Chick Corea
   Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer.Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever...
   
   , Helen Merrill
   Helen Merrill
   Helen Merrill is an internationally known jazz vocalist.Merrill's recording career has spanned six decades and she is popular with fans of jazz in Japan and Italy as well as in her native United States...
   
   ) - 6:17
2. "Daahoud" (Clifford Brown
   Clifford Brown
   Clifford Brown , aka "Brownie," was an influential and highly rated American jazz trumpeter. He died aged 25, leaving behind only four years' worth of recordings...
   
   ) - 2:58
3. "(I Was) Born to Be Blue" (Mel Tormé
   Mel Tormé
   Melvin Howard Tormé , nicknamed The Velvet Fog, was an American musician, known for his jazz singing. He was also a jazz composer and arranger, a drummer, an actor in radio, film, and television, and the author of five books...
   
   , Bob Wells
   Robert Wells (songwriter)
   Robert Wells was an American songwriter, composer, script writer and television producer. During his early career, he collaborated with singer and songwriter Mel Tormé, writing several hit songs, most notably "The Christmas Song" in 1945...
   
   ) - 5:16
4. "I Remember Clifford
   I Remember Clifford (song)
   I Remember Clifford is the name of a jazz threnody written by jazz tenor saxophone player Benny Golson in memory of Clifford Brown, the influential and highly-rated jazz trumpeter who died in an auto accident when he was only 25 years old...
   
   " (Benny Golson
   Benny Golson
   Benny Golson is an American bebop/hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and arranger.-Biography:While in high school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Golson played with several other promising young musicians, including John Coltrane, Red Garland, Jimmy Heath, Percy Heath, Philly Joe Jones, and...
   
   , Jon Hendricks
   Jon Hendricks
   Jon Hendricks is an American jazz lyricist and singer. He is considered one of the originators of vocalese, which adds lyrics to existing instrumental songs and replaces many instruments with vocalists...
   
   ) - 7:00
5. "Joy Spring" (Brown) - 3:59
6. "I'll Remember April
   I'll Remember April (song)
   "I'll Remember April" is a popular song. The music for the song was written by Gene de Paul, and the lyrics were written by Patricia Johnston and Don Raye....
   
   " (Gene de Paul
   Gene de Paul
   Gene de Paul was an American pianist, composer and songwriter.-Biography:Born in New York City, he served in the United States Army during World War II....
   
   , Patricia Johnston, Don Raye
   Don Raye
   Don Raye , born Donald MacRae Wilhoite, Jr., in Washington, D.C., was an American vaudevillian and songwriter, best known for his songs for the Andrews Sisters such as "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar", "The House of Blue Lights", "Just For A Thrill" and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy."While known for...
   
   ) - 7:14
7. "Don't Explain
   Don't Explain
   Don't Explain is the title of the second Umbilical Brothers DVD, released in November 2007. The show was filmed at the Athenaeum theatre in Melbourne.The Description on the back of the DVD:...
   
   " (Arthur Herzog Jr.
   Arthur Herzog Jr.
   Arthur Herzog, Jr. was a songwriter most known for work with Billie Holiday. He co-wrote several jazz songs she popularized, including "Don't Explain" and "God Bless the Child".-External links:*[ All Music page]...
   
   , Billie Holiday
   Billie Holiday
   Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...
   
   ) - 6:18
8. "Brownie" (Torrie Zito
   Torrie Zito
   Torrie Zito was an American pianist, music arranger, composer and conductor.He worked with many recording artists of note, including Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, Perry Como, Billy Eckstine, Herbie Mann, Steve Lawrence, Edie Gorme, Nana Mouskouri, Bobby Short, Marvin Hamlish, Roberto Carlos, Sinead...
   
   ) - 5:04
9. "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To
   You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To
   "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To" is a popular song written by Cole Porter, for the 1943 film Something to Shout About, where it was introduced by Janet Blair and Don Ameche. Dinah Shore had a major hit with the song at the time of its introduction...
   
   " (Cole Porter
   Cole Porter
   Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...
   
   ) - 4:33
10. "I'll Be Seeing You
    I'll Be Seeing You (song)
    "I'll Be Seeing You" is a popular song, with music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by Irving Kahal. Published in 1938, the song was inserted into the Broadway musical Right This Way, which closed after fifteen performances. The song is a jazz standard, and has been covered by countless musicians.The...
    
    " (Sammy Fain
    Sammy Fain
    Sammy Fain was an American composer of popular music.-Biography:Sammy Fain was born in New York City. In 1923, Fain appeared with Artie Dunn in a short film directed by Lee De Forest filmed in DeForest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process. In 1925, Fain left the Fain-Dunn act to devote himself to...
    
    , Irving Kahal
    Irving Kahal
    Irving Kahal was a popular lyricist active in the 1920's and '30's. He is best remembered for his collaborations with composer Sammy Fain which started in 1926 when Kahal was working in vaudeville sketches written by Gus Edwards...
    
    ) - 4:53
11. "Memories of You
    Memories of You
    "Memories of You" is a popular song with lyrics written by Andy Razaf and music composed by Eubie Blake and published in 1930.-Song history:The song was introduced by singer Minto Cato in the Broadway show Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1930...
    
    " (Eubie Blake
    Eubie Blake
    James Hubert Blake was an American composer, lyricist, and pianist of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, Blake and long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote the Broadway musical Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals to be written and directed by African Americans...
    
    , Andy Razaf) - 3:52
12. "Gone with the Wind
    Gone with the Wind (song)
    "Gone with the Wind" is a popular song. The music was written by Allie Wrubel, the lyrics by Herb Magidson. The song was published in 1937. A version recorded by Horace Heidt was a #1 song in 1937.Diane E...
    
    " (Herb Magidson
    Herb Magidson
    Herbert A. "Herb" Magidson was an American popular lyricist. His work was used in over 23 films and four Broadway reviews. He won the first Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1934....
    
    , Allie Wrubel
    Allie Wrubel
    Allie Wrubel was an American composer and songwriter.-Biography:Born in Middletown, Connecticut, Wrubel attended Wesleyan University and Columbia University before working in dance bands. He began his musical career in Greenwich Village, New York where he roomed with his close friend James Cagney...
    
    ) - 2:28
13. "Largo" (Samuel Barber
    Samuel Barber
    Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...
    
    , Anton Dvorak) - 2:55

Personnel

Production

• Helen Merrill
  Helen Merrill
  Helen Merrill is an internationally known jazz vocalist.Merrill's recording career has spanned six decades and she is popular with fans of jazz in Japan and Italy as well as in her native United States...
  
   - producer, vocals
  Singing
  Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
  
  
• Roy Hargrove
  Roy Hargrove
  Roy Anthony Hargrove is an American jazz trumpeter. He won worldwide notice after winning two Grammy Awards for differing types of music, in 1997, and in 2002...
  
   - flugelhorn
  Flugelhorn
  The flugelhorn is a brass instrument resembling a trumpet but with a wider, conical bore. Some consider it to be a member of the saxhorn family developed by Adolphe Sax ; however, other historians assert that it derives from the valve bugle designed by Michael Saurle , Munich 1832 , thus...
  
  , trumpet
  Trumpet
  The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
  
  
• Tom Harrell
  Tom Harrell
  Tom Harrell is a renowned American post-bop jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist, composer and arranger.-Biography:Tom Harrell was born in Urbana, Illinois but moved to the San Francisco Bay Area at the age of five. He started playing trumpet at eight and within five years, started playing gigs with...
  
  
• Wallace Roney
  Wallace Roney
  Wallace Roney is an American hard bop and post-bop trumpeter.Roney took lessons from Clark Terry and Dizzy Gillespie and studied with Miles Davis from 1985 until the latter's death in 1991...
  
   - trumpet
  Trumpet
  The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
  
  
• Lew Soloff
  Lew Soloff
  Lew Soloff is a jazz trumpeter, composer and actor. He studied trumpet at the Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. He is likely best known for his work with Blood, Sweat & Tears from 1968 to 1973...
  
  
• Roy Soloff
• Torrie Zito
  Torrie Zito
  Torrie Zito was an American pianist, music arranger, composer and conductor.He worked with many recording artists of note, including Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, Perry Como, Billy Eckstine, Herbie Mann, Steve Lawrence, Edie Gorme, Nana Mouskouri, Bobby Short, Marvin Hamlish, Roberto Carlos, Sinead...
  
   - arranger
  Arrangement
  The American Federation of Musicians defines arranging as "the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include reharmonization, paraphrasing, and/or development of a composition, so that it fully represents...
  
  , director, keyboards, music direction
• Kenny Barron
  Kenny Barron
  Kenny Barron , is an American jazz pianist. He is the younger brother of tenor saxophonist Bill Barron, and known for his lyrical, adaptive style.-Biography:...
  
   - piano
  Piano
  The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
  
  
• Rufus Reid
  Rufus Reid
  Rufus Reid is an American jazz bassist, educator, and composer. He lives in Teaneck, New Jersey.-Personal history:...
  
   - double bass
  Double bass
  The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
  
  
• Victor Lewis
  Victor Lewis
  Victor Lewis is an American jazz drummer, a major force in the genre since the 1980s.-As leader:*1992: Family Portrait - with John Stubblefield, Edward Simon, Cecil McBee, Don Alias, Jumma Santos...
  
   - drums
  Drum kit
  A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
  
  

Performance

• Patrice Beauséjour - art direction
• Mark Agostino - assistant engineer
• Brian Kinkland
• Arthur Friedman
• Jay Newland - engineer, mastering, mixing
• Aissa Martin - hair stylist, make-up
• Beth Kelly - photography
• Cheung Ching Ming
• Jean-Philippe Allard - producer