Sonny Clark

The first record Blue Note issued under Sonny Clark's name was cut on his twenty-sixth birthday, July 21, 1957, at Van Gelder Studio in Hackensack. He had been in New York about five months, brought east in February by a job accompanying Dinah Washington, and Alfred Lion gave him a sextet of Art Farmer on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Hank Mobley on tenor saxophone, Wilbur Ware on bass and Louis Hayes on drums.

Clark wrote four of the six tunes, among them the title track and "Sonny's Mood," and took the other two from the songbook, "It Could Happen to You" and "Love Walked In." The date sounds unhurried. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine calls it "a terrific set of laidback bop," while John S. Wilson, reviewing it at the time, enjoyed Farmer's "crackling solos" but thought he had to fight "a chomp-chomp rhythm section." I hear the chomp as the point of the record, since Ware and Hayes keep everything at a stroll and a three-horn front line that could have run hot stays loose instead.

It rates four stars from me because it is the quietest of Clark's Blue Note dates as a leader, and the ones that followed sharpen what he is doing here. Erlewine praises Clark's "liquid, swinging solos," and that is the reason to keep returning to it. Blue Note released it in November 1957 as BLP 1570, and six weeks after the session Clark was back at Van Gelder's with John Coltrane in the front line.

John Coltrane cut this date at Van Gelder Studio on September 1, 1957, two weeks before Blue Train, and the two sessions share more than a room: Curtis Fuller's trombone and Paul Chambers's bass are on both. Donald Byrd takes the trumpet chair here and Art Taylor sits at the drums, with Clark as leader six weeks after the Dial "S" for Sonny date.

Two of the five tunes are Clark's, the title blues at 13:31 and "News for Lulu" at 8:34, and the other three are standards, "With a Song in My Heart," "Speak Low" and "Come Rain or Come Shine." The shortest of them runs 6:50, which gives the horns room to stretch. AllMusic's Thom Jurek calls it "a phenomenal recording, one that opened the door to hard bop becoming the norm in the late '50s," and I agree about the door.

Leonard Feather wrote the liner notes, Reid Miles designed the jacket and Francis Wolff took the photograph, and Blue Note released it in March 1958. The CD adds alternate takes of "With a Song in My Heart," "Speak Low" and the title blues. It stays at four stars for me because the two originals are the strongest things here and the standards, good as they are, could sit on anybody's date. Collectors come for the tenor player, and the pianist is the reason it gets played again.

Not one of the six tracks on the first Sonny Clark Trio is a Clark original. Three come from the bebop catalog, Dizzy Gillespie's "Be-Bop" and "Two Bass Hit" (the latter written with John Lewis) and Tadd Dameron's "Tadd's Delight," and the other three are standards: "I Didn't Know What Time It Was," "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise" and "I'll Remember April."

He cut them at Van Gelder Studio on October 13, 1957, with Paul Chambers on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums, twelve weeks before the same two men joined him for Cool Struttin'. With no horn to answer, the program is Clark's right hand and Chambers and Jones underneath it, and he opens with "Be-Bop" at 9:54, the longest track by more than three minutes. AllMusic names Bud Powell as his deep early influence, and a record built from Gillespie and Dameron tunes is the easiest place to hear why.

Blue Note released it as BLP 1579 in May 1958, between Sonny's Crib in March and Cool Struttin' in August, so three Clark records reached the shops inside five months. The only thing holding it at four stars is that Clark does not write for it, and the Time trio date two and a half years later, further down this page, is all originals.

The woman mid-stride on the cover of Cool Struttin' is Ruth Lion, Alfred Lion's wife, photographed by Francis Wolff on a jacket designed by Reid Miles, and the sleeve became so familiar that Blue Note borrowed its design in 1991 for a Christmas CD called Yule Struttin'. The music earns the attention. Clark cut it at Van Gelder Studio on January 5, 1958, with Art Farmer on trumpet, Jackie McLean on alto saxophone, Paul Chambers on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums, the same rhythm section as the trio record twelve weeks earlier.

Clark wrote the title tune and "Blue Minor," and the second side pairs Miles Davis's "Sippin' at Bells" with the standard "Deep Night." The title track is a medium-slow blues with a two-beat bass pattern, and Chambers begins with the bow before switching to plucking. "Deep Night" begins with the trio playing the melody and the first solo alone, so Farmer does not come in until about two and a quarter minutes have passed.

Robert Palmer called it an "enduring hard-bop classic" in the New York Times in 1987, and AllMusic says it deserves its reputation "for its soul appeal alone," which is as good a description of the groove as I have read. It gets the site's one five-star mark among Clark's leader dates because nothing on it is padding: two originals, a Davis tune and a ballad, and a rhythm section he had recorded with twelve weeks before.

The six tracks of My Conception went unissued for twenty years, and when they appeared in 1979 it was as a Japanese Blue Note LP, GXF 3056. Clark recorded them at Van Gelder Studio on March 29, 1959, with Donald Byrd on trumpet, Hank Mobley on tenor saxophone, Paul Chambers on bass and Art Blakey on drums, the one record on this page with Blakey at the kit.

Every tune is Clark's, and several of them were already old friends. "Minor Meeting" and "Royal Flush" are second versions of tunes he had cut at the Blue Note sessions of December 1957 and January 1958, and "Junka," "Blues Blue," "Minor Meeting" and "My Conception" all turned up again on the Time trio date a year later. That makes the record a workshop in the best sense: a pianist leaning on his own writing and hearing it again with a different band.

AllMusic's Michael Nastos puts it "only a half step below his best," and I would not argue with the half step, which is why it sits at four stars. The 2000 CD reissue adds three tracks from the December 8, 1957 session with Clifford Jordan, Kenny Burrell and Pete La Roca, including the first version of "Minor Meeting."

Clark called George Duvivier and Max Roach "two dream cats for a pianist," and the record they made together is the only studio album he cut away from Blue Note. Bob Shad produced it for his Time label in 1960, Nat Hentoff wrote the original notes, and all eight tunes are Clark's own. Hentoff considered it Clark's finest recorded statement.

The session date is a small mystery. Jazzdisco and Discogs give March 23, 1960 in New York, while the coverage of the 2017 Tompkins Square reissue and Wikipedia's Clark biography say January, so I use the first and flag the second. The program opens with "Minor Meeting" and "Nica," which is a close relative of "Royal Flush" from Cool Struttin', and it includes a tune called "Sonny's Crib," the name of his 1957 sextet date. On "Junka" he takes five choruses on the chosen take, "Blues Mambo" sets a twelve-bar blues over a mambo groove from Roach, and "My Conception" is a rubato solo piano ballad with no bass or drums at all.

I keep it at four stars because Clark made better records with horns to bounce off, but nothing else shows his writing this plainly, and a pianist with Duvivier and Roach behind him has nowhere to hide. Time reissued the album in 1962 under all three names, Max Roach, Sonny Clark and George Duvivier.

Sonny Clark's last session as a leader came on November 13, 1961, fourteen months before he died on January 13, 1963, at thirty-one. Alfred Lion booked Van Gelder's Englewood Cliffs studio and a band of Tommy Turrentine on trumpet, Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone, Butch Warren on bass and Billy Higgins on drums, with Ike Quebec guesting on tenor for "Deep in a Dream" alone.

Three of the six tunes are not Clark's. Warren, the bassist, wrote "Eric Walks" and Turrentine wrote "Midnight Mambo," while Clark supplied "Somethin' Special," "Melody for C" and "Voodoo" and the Jimmy Van Heusen and Eddie DeLange ballad "Deep in a Dream" gives Quebec his one appearance. That makes it the only record on this page where sidemen contribute tunes. AllMusic's Michael Nastos calls it "a definitive recording for Clark," and AllMusic describes it as generally regarded as his best, a verdict I would still hand to Cool Struttin'.

Blue Note issued it in May 1962 as BLP 4091 in mono and BST 84091 in stereo, which earns it four stars here for the writing and for how comfortably Clark sits between Warren and Higgins. In August 1962 the same three men were back at Van Gelder's behind Dexter Gordon, and Go is the record to put on next.