Sandu is a 12-bar blues in Eb composed by trumpeter Clifford Brown and is featured on the 1955 album Study in Brown by Clifford Brown and Max Roach. The record is a hard bop/bebop session with Harold Land on tenor sax, Richie Powell on piano, George Morrow on bass, and Max Roach on drums. Sandu is one of the original Brown tunes on the album and has since become a jazz standard, known for Brown’s fast, precise trumpet lines. The origin of the name Sandu is not definitively known, and no single explanation has been confirmed. Clifford Brown, a rising star of the era, helped shape hard bop before his untimely death in 1956 at age 25, leaving a lasting legacy that includes this celebrated piece.
