In June 1950, he was seriously injured in a car accident after a successful gig. Brown played in the fourteen-piece, jazz-oriented, Maryland State Band. As Nick Catalano points out, Brown's trips to Philadelphia grew in frequency after he graduated from high school and entered Delaware State University it could be said that, although his dorm was in Dover, his classroom was in Philadelphia.

Brown took pride in his neighborhood and earned a good education from Howard High.īrown briefly attended Delaware State University as a math major, before he switched to Maryland State College, which was a more prosperous musical environment.

As a junior in high school, he received lessons from Robert Boysie Lowery and played in 'a jazz group that Lowery organized.' He even began making trips to Philadelphia. At age thirteen, upon entering senior high, his father bought him his own trumpet and provided him with private lessons. Around age ten, Brown started playing trumpet at school after becoming fascinated with the shiny trumpet his father owned. His father organized his four youngest sons, including Clifford, into a vocal quartet. Brown was born into a musical family in a progressive East-Side neighborhood of Wilmington, Delaware.

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