By 1996 a reel of film had reached Max Roach in New York. The comedian Soupy Sales had found it in his garage, and on it Clifford Brown was playing “Lady Be Good” and “Memories of You” on a Detroit TV show, months before he died.
Brown was just 25 when he died in a car accident in June 1956. In only a few years as a recording artist, he had established himself as one of the most extraordinary trumpeters of his generation, combining formidable technique with a warm tone, melodic imagination and an instinctive sense of swing.
His recordings with drummer Max Roach include Study in Brown and At Basin Street. Yet for decades, jazz fans could only imagine what Brown looked like in performance. Photographs captured his concentration and characteristic expression, but no moving footage of him playing was known to survive.
Then, in the 1990s, a short recording from a local Detroit television programme resurfaced. It showed Brown performing two standards and speaking briefly to a comedian named Soupy Sales. To this day, it remains the only known surviving film of Clifford Brown playing trumpet.
How Clifford Brown Ended Up on Soupy Sales’ TV Show
The footage survives thanks to an unlikely figure in jazz history: Soupy Sales, a comedian who would later become nationally famous for his children’s television programmes and the custard pies regularly thrown in his face.
In the mid-1950s, Sales was working at Detroit television station WXYZ-TV, where he hosted Lunch with Soupy and a late-night programme called Soupy’s On. Unlike his children’s show, the evening broadcast gave him an opportunity to indulge another passion: modern jazz.
Detroit had a thriving jazz scene, and Sales regularly invited visiting musicians to perform on television while they were appearing at local clubs. His guests included some of the biggest names in the music, among them Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Stan Getz.
When the Clifford Brown–Max Roach Quintet visited Detroit, Sales persuaded Brown to appear on the programme. Roach later recalled that the band would sometimes make brief television appearances to promote its engagements at the Rouge Lounge, but on this occasion Brown performed with the show’s own rhythm section rather than bringing the entire quintet into the studio.
It was filmed in Detroit in 1955 or early 1956, while the quintet was in town, only months before Brown’s death.
Two Songs and a Brief Conversation
The surviving performance contains two standards, beginning with a lively interpretation of “Lady Be Good” before moving into the ballad “Memories of You”.
The camera offers something Brown’s recordings cannot: a close view of his physical approach to the trumpet. We can watch his embouchure, the movement of his fingers and the intense concentration that appears in so many of his photographs. For trumpet players, the footage provides a particularly valuable opportunity to study a musician whose technique became a model for generations of jazz instrumentalists.
Max Roach was struck by precisely those details when he eventually saw the film. Speaking about the recording, he described how the camera revealed Brown’s embouchure and right-hand technique, calling it a remarkable study of the trumpeter at work.
After the music, Sales speaks briefly with Brown. The trumpeter mentions Study in Brown, the album he had recorded with Roach, and expresses his appreciation for the invitation. Sales also asks about a recent event in Brown’s personal life, giving the musician an opportunity to talk about the birth of his son.
It is a fleeting moment, but an unusually intimate one. We see not only the virtuoso whose recordings would become jazz classics, but also a young husband and father, smiling as he talks about his family.
The Film That Disappeared for Forty Years
In the 1950s, television programmes were often transmitted live, and many were never preserved. Before videotape became widely available, one way of keeping a broadcast was to make a kinescope: a film recording of the picture displayed on a television monitor.
A kinescope of Brown’s appearance survived, but it disappeared from public view for decades. Sales had kept the film, and whenever he encountered Max Roach in later years, he would mention that he believed he still had a copy somewhere.
According to jazz writer Doug Ramsey, Sales eventually located the recording in his garage in the mid-1990s. By 1996, it had reached Roach in New York.
When Max Roach Finally Saw Clifford Brown Again
One of the most moving accounts of the footage’s rediscovery comes from Brown’s biographer, Nick Catalano, author of Clifford Brown: The Life and Art of the Legendary Jazz Trumpeter.
Catalano was visiting Roach when the drummer showed him the long-lost recording. They watched Brown perform, observed the close-up camera work and listened as he spoke with Sales about his music and his newborn son.
Catalano later recalled how emotional the experience became. As the footage ended, he realised that he was not the only person in the room wiping away tears. Roach, who had played alongside Brown during the trumpeter’s final years, was equally moved.
For Roach, this was more than a rare television discovery. Brown had died on 26 June 1956 alongside pianist Richie Powell and Powell’s wife Nancy in a car accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The quintet they had built together was abruptly ended, and Roach had spent the intervening decades helping to preserve his friend’s musical legacy.
Now, roughly forty years later, he could watch Brown perform and hear him speak again.
Two songs, months before the Turnpike
Clifford Brown died on 26 June 1956 on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, aged 25. Soupy Sales kept the film of his Detroit TV appearance, found it in his garage in the mid-1990s, and by 1996 Max Roach was watching his friend play again.
For more, read our Clifford Brown biography and albums, our pick of Clifford Brown songs and our Max Roach page.
Which Clifford Brown record would you start someone with?
