BLP 1579

 Sonny Clark Trio

Released - March 1958

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, October 13, 1957
Sonny Clark, piano; Paul Chambers, bass #1-5; Philly Joe Jones, drums #1-5.

tk.3 I Didn't Know What Time It Was
tk.7 Two Bass Hit
tk.8 Be-Bop
tk.10 Tadd's Delight
tk.11 Softly As In A Morning Sunrise
tk.12 I'll Remember April

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Be-Bop	Dizzy Gillespie	13/10/1957
I Didn't Know What Time It Was	Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart	13/10/1957
Two Bass Hit	Dizzy Gillespie, John Lewis	13/10/1957
Side Two
Tadd's Delight	Tadd Dameron	13/10/1957
Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise	Oscar Hammerstein II, Sigmund Romberg	13/10/1957
I'll Remember April	Gene DePaul, Patricia Johnston, Don Raye	13/10/1957

Credits

Cover Photo:	FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design:	REID MILES
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	LEONARD FEATHER

Liner Notes

This is Sonny Clark's first trio session. Introduced to Blue Note aficionados with his first band date on BLP 1570, he featured a front line composed of Art Farmer, Curtis Fuller and Hank Mobley. On his impressive follow-up session (BLP 1576) the horns consisted of Donald Byrd, Curtis Fuller and John Coltrane. Now it is Sonny's turn to become his own front line.

Before we listened together to the rewarding results of this initial trio date, Sonny took a few moments to clarify and amplify his biography.

"Actually, I wasn't born in Pittsburgh," he said. "I was born in a little coal mining town, about 1 6 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, called Herminie, Pa.-population about 800. I was raised there 'til I was 12, then lived in Pittsburgh until I was 1 9, just turning 20; then an older brother, who plays piano, took me out to the coast to visit an aunt.

"Originally I only intended to stay a couple of months. I worked with Wardell Gray and all the fellows around the coast. Then Oscar Pettiford came to town and we got a band and went to San Francisco.

"I worked in San Francisco a couple of months. Buddy DeFranco was in town, with Art Blakey, and Kenny Drew on piano and Gene Wright on bass. Then Blakey and Kenny Drew left him and I joined, along with Wesley Landers, a drummer from Chicago. He only stayed a couple of weeks, then Bobby White came in-this was late in 1953, and as you know, soon after that, in January and February of '54, we toured Europe in your show, Jazz Club, U.S.A.

"That's where the gaps begin in my notes," I said. "It's been four years since we all came back from Europe and I can't account for everything that happened to you in that time. Perhaps you can fill me in."

"Well," said Sonny, "I stayed with Buddy quite a long while after we went back to the coast. We made another tour, in the Middle West, and we went to Honolulu. Altogether I was with Buddy about two and a half years. Then in January 1956, I joined Howard Rumsey's All-Stars at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, California and spent the whole year of 1956 there."

"How did you enjoy that?"

"The climate is crazy. I'm going to be truthful, though: I did have sort of a hard time trying to be comfortable in my playing. The fellows out on the West Coast have a different sort of feeling, a different approach to jazz. They swing in their own way. But Stan Levey, Frank Rosolino and Conte Candoli were a very big help; of course they all worked back in the East for a long time during the early part of their careers, and I think they have more of the feeling of the eastern vein than you usually find in the musicians out West. The eastern musicians play with so much fire and passion.

"We did concerts and a lot of record dates, and I could have stayed as long as I liked, but I wanted to see the East again, and also wanted to see my people who still live in Pittsburgh-a brother and two sisters-and a sister in Dayton. I got to see all of them by joining Dinah Washington in February 1957 and going along with her as accompanist more or less for the ride.

"Since settling down in New York, I've been doing mostly recording. I played a couple of weeks at Birdland with Stan Getz, and a weekend with Anita O'Day. What I want to do eventually, of course, is have my own trio or quartet and play in the kind of setting I like best-the kind of music you hear in this album."

The kind of music you hear in this album is precisely what you would expect on the basis of Sonny's previous performances and of his predilection for a hard-swinging trio setting. "Be-Bop," the early Dizzy Gillespie composition that kicks off the first side, is a veritable tour de funk. Sonny plays the original Gillespie introduction, delivers the melody with a slightly changed main phrase, starting it with a quarter note instead of the conventional bebop phrasing; then he tears off into a phenomenal marathon of ad lib choruses, ultimately stepping briefly into the background for a bowed chorus by Paul Chambers and a drum solo by Philly Joe Jones. The coda, like the introduction, is a slight variation of the original 1 944 Gillespie treatment.

"I Didn't Know What Time It Was," a 1939 Rodgers and Hart melody, is taken medium-fast, with Paul Chambers's pizzicato solo in the fourth chorus sharing the solo honors. "This was always a good tune," says Sonny, "and I always wanted to record it."

"Two Bass Hit," like "Be-Bop," recalls the early Gillespie days-not quite so early in this instance, as Dizzy recorded it in 1947 with a big band for which John Lewis (credited as co-composer here) served as pianist and arranger. Despite the title, Sonny used the tune in this instance more as a showcase for Philly Joe than for Paul; the drums and piano fours in the later passages are a striking example of presence of mind, facility of fingers and impact of imagination on the part of Messrs. Clark and Jones.

Side Two opens with still another evocation of the early bop days: "Tadd's Delight" was written and recorded by Tadd Dameron in 1947. The melody is a simple line that pushes gently forward with the frequent use of syncopation. Chambers has a pizzicato solo and Philly Joe trades eights with Sonny on the next-to-last chorus.

"Softly As In A Morning Sunrise" is a melody that has earned increasing acceptance among jazz musicians in recent years: another effective treatment will be found on Sonny Rollins's LP 1581. Sonny Clark here exhibits all his most valuable characteristics, from the funky break with which he steals into the second chorus, all the way through the increasingly down-home atmosphere until on the fifth chorus, for 1 6 measures, Philly Joe's brushes double the tempo ("he just felt it, I guess, from what I was doing," says Sonny). The melody returns on the sixth chorus, while Paul provides a fine counterline.

The session closes with an unaccompanied piano solo on the 1941 standard "I'll Remember April." "Everybody usually plays this tune so fast," Sonny complains, "but it's pretty-it's essentially a ballad." Practicing very convincingly what he has preached, Sonny offers two pensive and restrained ad lib choruses, with none of the trite, traditional jazzing up the melody or doubling the tempo.

If you have heard either of Sonny's previous two Blue Note releases, and were as impressed as I was with the results, you are probably ready and eager to hear him in a setting that affords him even wider opportunities to stretch out. This Sonny Clark trio date should provide the perfect answer to your unspoken but not unheeded request.

- LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The Book of Jazz)

Cover Design by REID MILES
Photos by FRANCIS WOLFF
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

SONNY CLARK TRIO - SONNY CLARK TRIO

Horn players loved Sonny Clark. His comping and low-keyed fire as a soloist made him an ideal member of any rhythm section. Consequently, Clark did the bulk of his recording, both as sideman and under his own name, in groups ranging in size from quartet to sextet. But Clark was also a brilliant trio pianist, as he revealed on record all too infrequently. This trio session, recorded for Blue Note during the most active studio period of his brief career, confirms that Clark had few peers in the piano/bass/drums setting.

He possessed two skills that no amount of study can produce — sustained melodic invention and a rhythmic concept as natural as breathing. His ideas did not just pour forth, but spun and twisted in unexpected ways that delivered an additional jolt. While some musicians play either ahead of or behind the beat, Clark would move back and forth, sustaining continuity all the while. He never called attention to himself, which may explain in part why a true appreciation of his talents only began to spread years after his death. Time has revealed that he was far more than a less intense Bud Powell or a less funky Horace Silver, as seemed to be the critical consensus during Clark’s lifetime. He had his own flow, his own groove, and a knack for hooking up with musical partners that complemented his talents.

Clark’s trio discography is slight. In addition to the music heard here, there are live tapes from Europe in 1954 (when the Buddy DeFranco quartet to which Clark belonged was part of Leonard Feather’s Jazz Club, U.S.A. tour) and an Oakland nightclub in 1955, 1958 trio sessions produced by Blue Note for original release on 45 rpm singles, and an important 1960 session on the Time label with George Duvivier and Max Roach. The present collection was the third LP Clark recorded as a leader for Blue Note in 1957, and includes Miles Davis’s rhythm section of the time. Clark meshed brilliantly with the celebrated team of Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones, and would work with them again on Hank Mobley’s Poppin’(cut one week after this session); Clark’s own classic Cool Struttin‘ (with Art Farmer and Jackie McLean in the front line, from January ‘58); and the January ‘59 recordings that comprise half of McLean’s Jackie’s Bag. Another telling point of comparison is Wynton Kelly’s Kelly At Midnight, recorded by Chambers and Jones with their Davis bandmate for Vee Jay in 1960.

Three alternate takes have been added to the original program here, of which the alternate “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” was the first complete take of the session. The master displays more snap, but the alternate has its own charms, including a funky kick in the second blowing chorus. “Two Bass Hit,” a staple for Chambers and Jones and a mini-feature for the drummer from the formation of the Miles Davis Quintet in 1955, finds the pair playing a leaner groove here in the absence of John Coltrane, who was also featured in the Davis arrangement. Clark even borrows the “Barnacle Bill” quote Coltrane favored in his recorded solos on this piece during the master take. The alternate was cut later in this instance, and builds to an especially strong series of exchanges.

“Tadd’s Delight” is taken at Clark’s ideal tempo, a medium pace that must have been keyed to the pianist’s heartbeat. It is wonderful to have an earlier alternate, where (as on the master) Chambers begins the soloing; then Clark digs in. The long lines, the yin/yang phrasing, the quiet drive were all there on the alternate; but the chorus that Clark and Jones share was indecisive, so the musicians produced one more take that proved to be even better. They also stretched out, with the master containing an extra piano chorus. Clark’s solo on the master s among his very best, a category that for this listener also includes “Speak Low” from his own Sonny’s Crib session and “Fidel” from the aforementioned Jackie’s Bag. The rest of the original LP, particularly “Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise,” is not far behind.

It’s a shame that Clark did not have more opportunities to record in the trio context — with Butch Warren and Billy Higgins, his frequent 1961-62 partners on Blue Note, for example. Those trio performances he did commit to tape, and like the rest of his work, shine more brightly with the passing years.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2001