Sonny Clark - Sonny's Crib
Released - January 1958
Recording and Session Information
Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, September 1, 1957
Donald Byrd, trumpet; Curtis Fuller, trombone; John Coltrane, tenor sax; Sonny Clark, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, drums.
tk.2 News For Lulu
tk.3 Sonny's Crib
tk.7/6 Speak Low
tk.10/9 With A Song In My Heart
tk.12 Come Rain Or Come Shine
Session Photos
Photos: Francis Wolff
Track Listing
| Side One | ||
| Title | Author | Recording Date |
| With a Song in My Heart | Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart | 01/09/1957 |
| Speak Low | Kurt Weill, Ogden Nash | 01/09/1957 |
| Come Rain or Come Shine | Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer | 01/09/1957 |
| Side Two | ||
| Sonny's Crib | Sonny Clark | 01/09/1957 |
| News for Lulu | Sonny Clark | 01/09/1957 |
Credits
| Cover Photo: | FRANCIS WOLFF |
| Cover Design: | REID MILES |
| Engineer: | RUDY VAN GELDER |
| Producer: | ALFRED LION |
| Liner Notes: | LEONARD FEATHER |
Liner Notes
CONRAD YEATIS CLARK, whom his musician friends call Sonny, is a short, sad-eyed, pensive little man who comes alive when he sits at the piano. For much of the past six years he has been in California, a part of the so-called west coast jazz scene; in it but not of it. He is back in New York now, and that is as it should be; the sinewy, aggressive brand of jazz for which he stands is better represented, and can provide him with more sympathetic surroundings, when Birdland is only a subway ride away.
Sonny was an almost unknown name when, as a member of the Buddy de Franco Quartet, he came east in January 1954 to form part of a show called Jazz Club USA. This was a group I had assembled for a European tour. Sonny was one of three pianists in the show — the others were Beryl Booker, who had her own trio, and Carl Drinkard, Billie Holiday’s accompanist. Sonny was also the youngest musician in the unit, 22 years old and inwardly excited about the chance to see a little of the world at this early stage in his career.
Though Beryl opened the show with a whole set of her own playing admirably in a Garnerish style, and though Drinkard was of course prominent throughout Billie’s closing set, it was Sonny who attracted the fascinated attention of the younger and more ambitious foreign musicians, and of the fans whose tastes leaned toward the Bud Powell and Monk schools of keyboard thought. On the opening night Buddy gave Sonny a number to himself, Over the Rainbow; in addition to the solo item he had a chance to spread freely over limitless choruses of the blues and other comfortable themes.
In three and a half weeks, chasing through Scandinavia and Germany, on dates in France, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, I never heard Sonny play a bad show. Not even when he had just stepped off an inadequately heated bus, in which he had just made a 300-mile trip from the previous one-nighter, in the depths of a close-to-zero German winter.
It was a pretty impressive record and it struck me then that the time might soon be ripe for Sonny to branch out with an album of his own. But that was in 1954, and Sonny promptly went back to California and remained with Buddy’s group for some time; after that, though he spent a full year at the Lighthouse and was fairly well accepted in local jazz circles, the prominence he hod seemed to deserve failed to materialize. Not until he decided to settle in the east again in 1957, when Alfred Lion reworded him for the decision with the album Dial S For Sonny on Blue Note BLP 1570, did the harvest of his own talent begin to accrue to him in fair measure.
On this, his second Blue Note LP, Sonny has a group around him that is, except for the retention of Curtis Fuller on trombone, different in personnel from the previous combo. John Coltrane has been heard previously on Blue Note with Paul Chambers on BLP 1534 and with Johnny Griffin on BLP 1559; he will be heard as leader of his own combo on BLP 1577. Born in 1926 in Hamlet, North Carolina, Coltrane made his professional debut with a cocktail combo in Philadelphia in 1945 before spending two years in a Navy band in Hawaii and paying some rhythm and blues dues with Eddie Vinson’s group from 1947-8. After working with Dizzy Gillespie in 1949-51, he spent a couple of years with Earl Bostic and Johnny Hodges, emerging on the new jazz scene in 1955 as a member of Miles Davis’ group. One of the most self-assured tenor man of the hard bop school, “Trane” names Sonny Stilt, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz as his favorites. (Sonny says “I’d always admired Coltrane but had never had a chance to work with him before. It sure seemed to work out fine.”)
Donald Byrd, the young Detroiter who came to prominence with the George Wallington combo and with Art Blakey’s Messengers in 1955-6, has recently earned a substantial token of recognition as the nominee for “New Star” on trumpet in the latest Down Beat Jazz Critics’ Poll. Curtis Fuller already has two LPs of his own (BLP 1567 and BLP 1572) as well as an appearance with Bud Powell on 1571. Paul Chambers, a Pittsburgher like Sonny, and Art Taylor, whose credits include the combos of De Franco in ‘52, Bud Powell off and on since ‘53 and Wallington in ‘54, supply Sonny with a pulsingly emphatic rhythm backing of the kind that lends itself ideally to his own surgingly expressive style.
The set starts with a Rodgers and Hart composition, With A Song in my Heart, which began life as o show tune (in Spring is Here) and is extended hero to long meter, which makes the chorus 64 measures long. Byrd outlines the melody at a very bright tempo while Fuller expresses some casual thoughts on the sidelines; then a sharp break leads into two trumpet choruses that reveal not only Byrd’s influences (Dizzy and Miles) but his own hard-hitting fluency. Coltrane drives energetically through a similarly exciting two-chorus excursion, followed by a slightly more subdued Curtis Fuller. Sonny’s own chorus, which follows, typifies his own fleet and well-articulated lines.
Speak Low, a Kurt Weill composition dating back to 1943, opens with a Latin-tinged ensemble that conveys what one might indelicately call the guts of the tune, as well as its heart, with Coltrane leading the way in a deceptively light-toned style that almost suggests an alto sound. Trane has the second chorus to himself; Byrd and Fuller split the next, with the former implicitly bowing to Jay Jay Johnson. Again Sonny hos the final solo.
Come Rain or Come Shine, a 1946 Harold Arlen melody from St. Louis Woman, is token very slowly, with Curtis Fuller handling the melody introspectively and with only occasional variations. Notice the effective suspense created by Paul Chambers on the measures that lead into the second chorus, played by Sonny. The third and final chorus ¡s split by Coltrane and Byrd, Paul resorting to his bow during the tag.
Sonny’s Crib provides the ingredient that is almost a sine quo non of any modern jazz session that wants to establish a firm groove: it’s a plain old B-Flat blues, with a simple unison theme built around the tonic. For variety’s sake, though, there is an eight-bar release which gives the solos a 12-12-8-12 construction, a formula currently in increasingly popular use. Coltrane, Fuller, Byrd and Clark are all in their element here, and around the ninth chorus Paul indulges in a pizzicato solo, with triplets galore, that reminds the listener of the technical prowess of this astonishing youngster.
News for Lulu opens with a left-hand figure by Sonny that is continued and repeated as an accompanying riff to the melody, an attractive minor theme with a 32-bar chorus. This time it is Sonny who gets the solo proceedings underway, two loosely swinging choruses at a medium tempo he seems to find particularly effective. Byrd, Coltrane and Fuller have two choruses apiece, in that order. Coltrane, even more than his teammates, seems particularly at ease in the minor mode. Fuller’s solo, too, is among his best of the entire session; note particularly the surprise effect of the high D that starts his second chorus, and the ingenious return to it on a different beat a couple of measures later. Chambers again has a superb pizzicato solo before the theme returns. (The Lulu of the title, by the way, is not a girl friend, as might normally be expected. Lulu is half-chow and half-German shepherd, and Sonny had to leave both halves behind in California.)
An unusual feature of this session — unusual, at least by the standards of contemporary customs on small combo record dates — is that there ore no “fours” at any point. Possibly the men felt that there was no need for them to appear to be giving the impression of trying to outdo each other by indulging in four-measure chases, since they were able to express themselves individually and comprehensively in their own full solo choruses. Whatever the reason, and no matter how effective fours may be as a spur to the soloists under some conditions, they were certainly not missed here, for there are enough 32s, 64s and even 128s to provide a maximum of improvisation and inspiration.
— LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The Book of Jazz)
Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER
January 2013 - Blue Note Spotlight
Blue Note Spotlight - January 2013
On Sonny’s Crib, the second Blue Note album from under-sung hard bop pianist Sonny Clark, the arrangements seem to be saying something very specific. For each of the LP’s standards, Clark appoints a single player to handle the melody: Trumpeter Donald Byrd tackles “With a Song in My Heart”; “Speak Low” is spoken by tenor saxophonist John Coltrane; and “Come Rain or Come Shine” is handed off to trombonist Curtis Fuller. But on the album’s two originals, “Sonny’s Crib” and “News for Lulu,” the script is flipped—Clark’s hornmen play the clear, down-home heads together. If there’s a message here, perhaps it’s this: Standards need little more than an individual spin to be heard, but it takes a village to properly belt out Clark’s tunes. And so it’s this juxtaposition of solitude and unity that’s at the core of Sonny’s Crib.
Recorded on September 1, 1957, and also featuring bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Art Taylor, Crib begins with that version of “With a Song in My Heart,” taken at breakneck speed. After conjuring up the melody over tiny flourishes from Fuller and Coltrane, Byrd jumps right into a winding, sure-footed solo, one low on space but not at the expense of thought or lyricism. Commencing with a few moments of lush solo piano, Kurt Weill’s “Speak Low” is brought to life by Coltrane’s singing sax and Chambers’s propulsive low end, the bassist alternating between walking and outlining the head. Clark’s solo on “Speak” is a rolling, rambling essay that stretches from bop to blues and back, the leader adding pinches of dirt and grease where other pianists might have waxed or polished.
“Come Rain or Come Shine,” the album’s only ballad, crawls along to the tune of Fuller’s sweet, lazy trombone and Taylor’s understated brushwork, not to mention Chambers’s sparse plodding, which comes as a relief after the relentless walking of the previous two pieces. Here, at a snail’s pace, Clark improvises better than he does anywhere else on the album; granting himself what likely felt in the moment like all the time and space in the world, he accesses a sly, soulful well of ideas, disregarding bebop’s technique-driven competitive streak. For the last thirty seconds of the tune, Chambers gets into some arco textures, bowing the listener back home.
With standard time out of the way, the members of the Clark sextet unite in a deeper way to explore a pair of the leader’s originals. A blues with a bridge, “Sonny’s Crib” is the first tune on the album to feature all three horn players on the head. With its nearly 14-minute running time, “Crib” is also the biggest jam of the session, featuring solos from every band member except Taylor; Chambers’s loose, bubbling improvisation is thrilling, though no more so than, say, Clark’s long, chiming dispatch or Fuller’s ebullient, blustery appeal. Named for Clark’s dog, a German shepherd mix, “News for Lulu” opens on a nervous, vulnerable ostinato shared by bass and piano, and complicates things with a rising, inquisitive three-horn melody. Clark takes the first solo, as if to remind the listener that, despite the powerful group dynamic cultivated by the end of the LP, this is the pianist’s show. Later in the tune, Coltrane threatens to melt Rudy Van Gelder’s mics with a fiery tale of pain and devotion.
Appended to the 1998 CD reissue, three alternate takes tell stories of their own. The rejected version of “With a Song” is a more frenzied affair than the album version, with eight bars of hectic solo piano to start things off and a wilder solo from Coltrane. Notable, too, is a new section where each of the horn players trades fours with Taylor; funnily, in the original liner notes, Leonard Feather writes, “An unusual feature of this session—unusual, at least by the standards of contemporary customs on small combo record dates—is that there are no ‘fours’ at any point.” Also, if the piano solo from the alternate take of “With a Song” and the trumpet and piano solos from “Speak Low” sound familiar, it’s not because of any sort of planning on the players’ parts; these improvisations were snagged from the alternate takes and spliced into the classic versions.
Crib is also a snapshot of Coltrane during an important transitional period. In April, he had been fired from Miles Davis’s group; in May, he quit heroin for good; and in the middle of July, he joined Thelonious Monk’s quartet, a situation that would last until the end of the year. So it was as a clean-living disciple of the High Priest of Bop that Coltrane descended on Van Gelder’s New Jersey studio that day, to riff with Clark, Byrd, Taylor, Fuller, and Chambers. Exactly two weeks later, Coltrane returned, with Fuller and Chambers in tow, to record the Blue Note classic Blue Train. And that album came not just on the heels of Crib, but also following appearances by Coltrane on Blue Note sessions led by Chambers and fellow saxophonist Johnny Griffin.
Sonny Clark’s music has had an undeniable impact on jazz musicians the world over, but interestingly, some of its strongest support has come from jazz’s avant-garde community. In 1985, pianist Wayne Horvitz assembled the Sonny Clark Memorial Quartet, which issued one album, Voodoo, the following year. Also featuring bassist Ray Drummond, drummer Bobby Previte, and savage altoist John Zorn, the quartet produced more-or-less faithful versions of Clark compositions, including “Sonny’s Crib,” which concludes Voodoo. And in ’88, the trio of Zorn, guitarist Bill Frisell, and trombonist George Lewis released News for Lulu, a disc of hard-bop tunes that includes “Sonny’s Crib” and the title track. More News for Lulu, a second outing from the triumvirate, emerged in ’92; that disc also includes a version of “News for Lulu.”
Clark, who lost his battle with heroin in 1963, was, in the words of Feather, a “short, sad-eyed, pensive little man who comes alive when he sits at the piano.” On Sonny’s Crib, one can hear Clark springing to life, and the feeling is mutual.
UDiscoverMusic - September 2020
Located 23 miles south-east of Pittsburgh, Herminie might seem like a small, unassuming Pennsylvanian coal mining community, but it gave the world Sonny Clark, a bona fide giant of jazz piano. Born on Friday, July 31, 1931, he was baptized Conrad Yeatis Clark and, for a few fleeting years, between 1955 and 1961, he was a prolific recording artist for Blue Note Records in New York, laying down classic albums like Sonny’s Crib, Cool Struttin’ and My Conception. But his time in the spotlight was painfully brief; the pianist died from a heroin overdose on Sunday, January 13, 1963. He was 31 years old.
Drawn to the piano as a boy and possessing a natural facility for the instrument, Clark, who was the youngest in a family of eight children, began playing in a local hotel while still in elementary school. He started his professional music career in 1951 after visiting an aunt in California, where he joined the band of saxophonist Wardell Gray. He later played with noted bassist Oscar Pettiford and also worked as a sideman for bebop clarinetist Buddy DeFranco (with whom he recorded five LPs and toured Europe) as well joining the ranks of bassist Howard Rumsey’s West Coast group, Lighthouse All-Stars.
After six years in California, Clark returned to the East Coast in early 1957, and was soon in demand as a sideman, initially as an accompanist for singer Dinah Washington, and then on a recording session for Sonny Rollins. Distilling the innovations of Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk to create his own bebop-influenced style, Clark attracted the attention of Blue Note’s boss, Alfred Lion, after impressing on a June ’57 session for saxophonist Hank Mobley. Lion then gave the pianist his first shot at leading a recording session under his own name a few weeks later, in July of that year, when he recorded his debut album, Dial “S” For Sonny, which immediately established Clark as a hard bop pianist of the first order.
By the time that Clark went back into Rudy Van Gelder’s Hackensack studio to record his second album for Blue Note – on September 1, 1957, when he laid down the tracks for what became Sonny’s Crib – the pianist had racked up several other sideman sessions for the label, including another one for Hank Mobley.
On Sonny’s Crib, Clark opted to use the sextet format that had worked so well on his debut album, though only trombonist Curtis Fuller remained from that session’s line-up. In came Donald Byrd on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Paul Chambers on bass and Art Taylor on drums. With a reborn, revitalized Coltrane on board, it was an impressive line-up (earlier in the year, Trane had been fired from the Miles Davis Quintet for unreliability due to drug addiction, but, by September, had quit heroin for good; in late ’57, however, he was re-establishing himself as a major force in jazz).
Three of the album’s five tracks are standards. The opener is a swinging take on Rodgers & Hart’s “With A Song In My Heart,” while a jaunty reading of Kurt Weill’s “Speak Low” is propelled by an infectious Latin groove, with Coltrane taking the first solo and displaying his absolute mastery of the tenor saxophone. A wistful take on Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s mournful ballad “Come Rain Or Come Shine” shows the sextet in reflective mood, with Fuller’s resonant trombone particularly effective.
For side two of Sonny’s Crib, Clark reserved two long self-penned tunes. The first is the title song, a classic piece of unadulterated hard bop where the “head” theme draws on “amen” cadences from African-American church music. It then eases into a midtempo swing groove which allows the soloists to stretch out. First in line is Coltrane, who delivers a typically robust but fluid “sheets of sound”-style solo.
Closing the LP is “News For Lulu,” another uptempo piece with Latin inflections that is distinguished by adroit ensemble work and stellar solos. Fittingly, Clark leads the first solo on this final track, which reveals his lean melodic style and right-hand melodies that are almost horn-like in their phrasing.
After Sonny’s Crib, Sonny Clark recorded six more sessions as a leader for Blue Note, including, a year later, what many critics perceive as his definitive album: Cool Struttin’. Always in demand, Clark also played as a sideman on a slew of sessions for the label, including albums by Lee Morgan, Jackie McLean, Stanley Turrentine, Grant Green, and Dexter Gordon.
Though diminutive in terms of his height (he stood only five foot, five inches), Sonny Clark was undoubtedly a man of substantial stature in the jazz world. He might have achieved even greater things had he lived longer, but as it is, Sonny’s Crib is a classic album that ensures that both his music and talent can be appreciated by future generations.
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