Clifford Brown And Max Roach - Study In Brown (1996)

A key album of early hard bop, and one of the legendary quintet's best recordings. By the mid-1950s, Brown and Roach had formed a band that would become one of the most important representatives of the new jazz movement. Here, bebop becomes denser, more energetic, and more down-to-earth: the blues feel is stronger, the rhythm section is more dynamic, while the music retains its incredible harmonic complexity and virtuosity.
The duo of the two frontmen - the brilliant, technically perfect trumpeter and the extremely creative drummer, Roach - lends a special energy to the album. The music still sounds surprisingly fresh today, and it already shows the direction that later led to the more mature hard bop: a combination of jazz complexity, blues, gospel, and powerful swing.