BLP 1570

Sonny Clark - Dial "S" For Sonny

Released - October 1957

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, July 21, 1957
Art Farmer, trumpet #1-5; Curtis Fuller, trombone #1-5; Hank Mobley, tenor sax #1-5; Sonny Clark, piano; Wilbur Ware, bass; Louis Hayes, drums.

tk.2 Sonny's Mood
tk.5 Bootin' It
tk.8 Dial "S" For Sonny
tk.11 It Could Happen To You
tk.13 Shouting On A Riff
tk.15 Love Walked In

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Dial "S" for Sonny	Sonny Clark	21/07/1957
Bootin' It	Sonny Clark	21/07/1957
It Could Happen to You	Johnny Burke, Jimmy Van Heusen	21/07/1957
Side Two
Sonny's Mood	Sonny Clark	21/07/1957
Shoutin' on a Riff	Sonny Clark	21/07/1957
Love Walked In	George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin	21/07/1957

Credits

Cover Photo:	WILLIAM CONNORS
Cover Design:	REID MILES
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	ROBERT LEVIN

Liner Notes

"DIAL S FOR SONNY," Sonny Clark's first LP as a leader, represents a kind of "homecoming" token for the diminutive young pianist who recently returned east after a five year stay on the west coast. Sonny's lengthy association with the "West Coast" school has provided him with a broader perspective and understanding, than have most musicians, of the various routes modern jazz is taking and has enabled him to choose his own direction intelligently. The knowledge he has gained has led him to decide that his "direction" points eastward but this preference does not signify a disrespect for the "West Coasters," nor does it suggest that Sonny doubts or disputes the worth or validity Of their music. He explains it this way.

"Jazz is jazz wherever it's played. The whole thing has to do with the individual and his conception towards jazz. The thing is that my way of playing jazz is different from the way most of the fellows out west play. I'd rather work in the east because what is played here is closer to the traditional meaning of jazz. They're getting away from tradition out west — combining jazz with classical music and playing chamber music type jazz. What they play is really very good. but it's just not the way I want to play. That's why I came back east."

Igor Stravinsky, in his "Poetics Of Music" says, "A real tradition is not the relic of a past irretrievably gone; it is a living force that animates and informs the present." Stravinsky was referring to classical music but the same holds true in jazz and Sonny Clark is an example of the musician whose roots are firmly grounded in jazz tradition. Throughout his playing there can be detected a strong undercurrent Of the blues, even when what he is playing is apart from the blues, and this quality in Sonny reminds me of Horace Sonny does not sound particularly like Horace, but both pianists have in common a profound reverence for their origins and at no time do they use the blues form superficially. It is an inherent and constant part of them.

Sonny Clark was born in Pittsburgh on July 21, 1931 and began studying the piano when he was four. When he was only six he was featured on several "Amateur Hour" radio programs playing Boogie Wooqie. He became interested in jazz around 1945 when he heard the Basie and Ellington bands over the radio and Fats Waller and Art Tatum records. He played bass and vibes in his high schol band and was also a featured piano soloist. While still in high school he worked around the Pittsburgh area with teen-age dance bands. In 1951, when his mother died, he went west with an older brother.

His first stop Was San Francicso where he gigged with Vido Musso and Oscar Pettiford. He led his own trio at the "Down Beat" for awhile before traveling south to Los Angeles where he "worked casually with practically everyone in town;" Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, Art Farmer, Anita O'Day, Stan Getz, Barney Kessel, Zoot Sims, Art Pepper, Tal Farlow, Shorty Rogers, Shelley Manne, etc. In 1954 he joined Buddy DeFranco for an extensive two and a half year tour of the United States and Europe visiting Such countries as Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland. Belgium and France. When he returned to L.A. he joined the "Lighthouse All-Stars" with Bud Shank, Stan Levey, Bob Cooper, Frank Rosolino, Conte Candoli and Howard Rumsey. He came to New York in April of 1957 with Dinah Washington, working his way across the states with her, and gigged with J. R. Monterose at "Birdland," Sonny Rollins and Charlie Mingus. He also recorded with Curtis Fuller (BLP1572) and the Chicago altoist John Jenkins (BLP1573).

Sonny names as his most important influences Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk and lists a variety of musicians as being his favorites; Horace Silver, Tommy Flanagan, Red Garland, Hank Jones, Art Taylor, Philly Joe Jones, Kenny Clarke. Art Blakey, Roy Haynes, Louis Hayes, Paul Chambers, Percy Heath, Wilbur Ware, Oscar Pettiford, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Art Farmer, Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, Sonny Rollins, Cliff Jordan, Jackie McLean, Sonny Stitt, Zoot Sims. Curtis Fuller, Hank Mobley, Milt Jackson, Kenny Burrell, Barney Kessel and Tal Farlow.

Sonny handpicked the musicians used on this date. All have recorded previously for Blue Note.

"I jammed with Wilbur Ware in Chicago in 1954 while I was touring with DeFranco. He knocked me out! I knew Art Farmer from the coast and I've always liked him. I heard Curtis Fuller with Dizzy Gillespie's band and Louis Hayes with Horace Silver's quintet and I think they're going to be great ones someday. I never heard Hank Mobley in person until I came to New York but I listened to his records with the Jazz Messengers and dug him very much. All these guys play in my style and I was very happy working with them and very satisfied with the results."

The four originals in this set are by Sonny. The title tune, Dial S For Sonny, has a moody, minor theme and funky, expressive solos by Mobley. Fuller, Farmer, Clark and Ware. Wilbur comments again, briefly but significantly, after the closing restatement of the theme.

Bootin' It is a bright, happy opus with Sonny's right hand moving freely and delightfully. Curtis' gutty trombone, Hank's flowing tenor and Art's sharply biting trumpet (with Curtis and Hank riffing behind him) swing buoyantly in keeping with the "Sonny" atmosphere suggested by the theme. Sonny and each of the horns engage in a brace of exciting exchanges with Hayes before the close.

If Could Happen To You opens with a soulful Farmer, perhaps bemoaning the fact that it happened but, turned out all wrong. Sonny, Hank and Curtis show their compassion with pretty, brooding statements of their own.

Sonny's Mood is spritely and exhilarating and rubs off on Art, Hank, Curtis and then Sonny in that order. The same mood is continued with Shoutin' On A Riff an infectious romper with Sonny, the horns and Louis all getting a chance to come up and blow at length.

Love Walked In is used as a solo vehicle for Sonny with Wilbur and Louis as his accompanists. Sonny demonstrates his imaginative way with a melody and his inherent swinging qualities quite well here.

Once again Blue Note is to be commended for offering full exposure to a worthy young talent. Sonny Clark is a sincere and likeable young man with something to say and herein given the chance shows himself to be an important new voice on the jazz scene.

-ROBERT LEVIN

Cover Design by REID MILES
Photo by WILLIAM CONNORS
Artists' Photos by FRANCIS WOLFF
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT DIAL "S" FOR SONNY

Dial "S" for Sonny, while not the best recording of pianist Sonny Clark's career, was the most fateful. It ensured his position as a major presence at Blue Note Records, where he functioned in a dominant role as both sideman and leader during two brief but intense stretches (1957-58 and 1961-62), and where he created the legacy for which we remember him four decades after his death.

From the perspective of a jazz artist in search of a recording career, Clark's arrival in New York after his California years was particularly well timed. Major labels were actively documenting the music, and independent labels were flourishing, thanks in part to the new 12-inch LP format. Blue Note and such competitors as Prestige, Riverside, and Savoy were signing old and new artists to sustain their expanding rosters, with a premium given to those who possessed star quality and/or the flexibility to work in supporting as well as leading roles. Clark lacked the charisma of such recent Blue Note discoveries as Jimmy Smith and Lee Morgan, but his talent for enlivening a variety of settings was beyond reproach. Among the talented newcomers who made up Blue Note's "Class of '57" (Curtis Fuller, John Gilmore, John Jenkins, Clifford Jordan, and Sabu Martinez were the others), Clark went on to establish the most productive and longstanding relationship with producer Alfred Lion. The pianist had first come to the label's attention on the sextet album with Hank Mobley a month earlier, and became a fixture so quickly that he amassed a dozen additional credits - nine as sideman, three as leader - before the calendar year ended.

Stylistic connections to Bud Powell and Horace Silver, two pianists with strong Blue Note ties, make it easy to understand why Clark fit in so well. His affinity with Silver, then in the process of solidifying recent Jazz Messenger successes with his own band and the hit single "Senor Blues," could not have been emphasized more than they were on the present album, given that Art Farmer, Mobley, and Louis Hayes had all been working together in the Silver quintet. The connection is clear enough, especially in the way Clark's supporting figures develop into sustained ideas of their own and in the honest funk of the composition "Bootin' It." At the same time, there was less brit-tleness and more flow in Clark's solo lines, bringing him closer to the Powell model albeit minus the relentlessness and the astonishing virtuosity. This blend of bebop grounding and hard bop soul goes far to explain why Clark caught on so quickly with so many members of the Blue Note family.

He was clearly at home with the members of the present group, and with the exception of Ware, would work with each again on numerous occasions. The material Clark chose to record was straightforward and well balanced in terms of tempo and moods, and all hands seem to have settled in comfortably. There are two versions of "Bootin' It," although they are not completely different, with the bonus "stereo" take identical to the originally issued mono until the exchanges with drummer Hayes. The editing may have been prompted by Clark's hesitation heading into the fours on the unedited stereo take, or might have its origins in undocumented technical problems that sometimes arose in this early period of stereo recording. Dial "S" for Sonny was among Blue Note's first stereo sessions, and as was the case with a couple of the others, it was originally released in mono only, finally appearing in stereo at the time of its first CD reissue in 1997.

The flow in Clark's improvisations mentioned above is what truly made him a special musician. At his best, ideas poured forth that were linked, one to the next, with delightful shifts in rhythmic emphasis that never dispelled the forward motion or the overall feeling of supreme relaxation. Particularly at medium tempos, his solos convey an effortless, falling-off-a-log quality while still paying careful attention. Here, his feature "Love Walked In" is the best example, although such subsequent performances as "Speak Low" (from Sonny's Crib) and "Tadd's Delight" (Sonny Clark Trio), both from later in 1957, and "Fidel" (on Jackie McLean's Jackie's Bag) from 1959, are even better.

Heroin addiction reduced Clark's visibility shortly after the McLean date, and no doubt explains his absence from Blue Note for more than two-and-a-half years. He returned late in 1961 (on another McLean venture, A Fickle Sonance) with skills intact and a richer harmonic concept. Another intense, rewarding period of studio activity followed before Clark died of drug-related causes in January 1963. It was not until more than a decade later that Clark's performances, on this album and throughout the Blue Note catalogue, began to be acknowledged as some of the finest of the period.

- Bob Blumenthal, 2004