Clifford Brown (October 30, 1930 – June 26, 1956) was an influential and highly-rated American jazz trumpeter. Despite an abbreviated recording career of only 4 years duration (due to his early death), he had a considerable influence on later jazz trumpet players, including Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Wynton Marsalis, Nicholas Payton, Arturo Sandoval, and especially Valery Ponomarev.

He won the Down Beat critics' poll for the 'New Star of the Year' in 1954; he was inducted into the Down Beat 'Jazz Hall of Fame' in 1972 in the critics' poll. Sandoval described him as "one of what we call the mandatory trumpet players" who was "one of the greatest trumpet players of all time".