SONNY CLARK was born in Herminie, Pennsylvania, in 1931. He played piano from the age of four, dabbled in bass and vibes while in highschool, and left for the west coast with an older brother at the of nineteen. In Los Angeles, he hooked up with the great tenor man Wardell Gray and, later, traveled up to San Francisco with the legendary bassist Oscar Pettiford. While on the Coast during the early fifties, he worked with a large number of jazz figures, including Stan Getz, Shelly Manne, Buddy De Franco, and, for a stretch, Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars.
He finally tired of the laid-back California attitude in 1957 and hitched a ride to the east coast as Dinah Washington's piano player. "I'm going to be truthful," he said at the time, "1 did have sort of a hard time trying to be comfortable in my playing (in California). The fellows out on the west coast have a different sort of feeling... The eastern musicians play with so much fire and passion!"
Landing in New York, his career began to blossom. After brief stints with Sonny Rollins and Charles Mingus, he appeared on a series of influential Blue Note recordings which featured, among others, Jackie McLean and Philly Joe Jones, players he became heavily associated with during the late fifties. It was there, in New York, while riding the great heroin wave, that he collapsed and died, relatively broke and still practically unknown except among a handfull of jazz aficionados.
So it is particularly ironic that today, almost twenty years later, the pianist from a small coal mining town south-east of Pittsburgh is a well known name in Japanese jazz circles. Although he died in 1963, and remains an obscure footnote to bebop's stormy past in this country, his recordings still continue to sell well in Japan, often outpacing the new releases by contemporary artists.
All nine of the albums he recorded for Blue Note been available in Japan, while only five of them were released in this country. Until now. This album, SONNY CLARK QUINTETS. was originally assigned the Blue Note catalog number 1592, and was even listed in some catalogs, but was never put on the market in America. It has, however, been available in Japan for some time, albeit in monaural format. With the release of this sixth Sonny Clark Blue Note classic, we have a chance to those qualities that make this subtle, swinging pianist such a hit in the Orient, yet such an unknown figure here at home.
The first quality that comes to mind is originality. Although the Japanese are skilled at reproducing American technology (including copping a musician's style down to the last lick, they remain in awe of that wild, individualistic spirit that permeates our culture, and, particularly, our music. And Sonny Clark is nothing if not an original piano player. You know it's him after the first handfull of notes. In America, his subtle style has gotten lost in the underbrush of passing time and his obscurity is, in part, a case of not seeing the trees for the forest, if one may invert the old cliche. The Japanese. however, are more respectful of the past, and tend their gardens with greater care.
The second quality is delicacy. The Japanese are drawn to the nuance, to the soul of the expression. They have the uncannv ability (as any American jazz musician who has performed in that country can attest) to pick out the musical gems from a veritable landslide of notes and reward the author with a permanent place in their hearts. Sonny Clark has earned such a place, for his touch on the instrument is as gentle and sure as the stroke of a pen on stretched parchment. Suffice it to say that in America, bombast has usually transported an audience a lot farther than nuance.
Finally, there's the company he keeps. Sonny's recordings have been graced by such horn players as Donald Byrd, John Coltrane, Curtis Fuller, or Hank Mobley, and have included such rhythm section stalwarts as Sam Jones, Wilbur Ware, Art Taylor or Louis Hayes. All these men are thought of as important cultural icons in Japan, while in the united States, some of them probably couldn't even get car insurance when they needed it.
Half of this material was recorded at the same January 5, 1958 session that produced Sonny's classic COOL STRUTTIN' album, kicks off with a Clark original. "Royal Flush". (Clark also recorded this tune several wears later with a trio, a version that finally appeared in Japan during 1979 as part of the album MY CONCEPTION.) A medium, 32-bar sizzler with angular lines and a one-note "shout" kind of bridge, the song is a good introduction to Sonny's favorite saxophone player, Jackie McLean. Jackie's choruses are effortless, and act as an illuminated commentary on the gospel according to Clark. (Some of McLean's finest recordings, too, have Sonny on piano: see, particularly, the Blue Note twofer HIPNOSIS.)
McLean's solo is followed by that of Art Farmer, a friend and cohort of Sonny's from the days in California, and, at the time of this recording, a sometime member of the Horace Silver quintet. His round, mellow tone is a nice contrast to McLean's hard edge. It's interesting that both men project a kind of profound sadness in their playing, each using an opposite tact. It is, however, a sadness like the blues itself, it hurts so nice.
The second tune from the January 5th date is the Rodgers and Hart warhorse "Lover", It's obvious from the Philly Joe Jones introduction that this "Lover" is off to the races and about to be taken for quite a ride. The pseudo waltz-time bridge only adds to the devil-may-care attitude band takes as Jackie plunges into the first turn. Notice how Sonny slips the chord changes in beneath Jackie, leading him gently down the path he's already taking. At times, their communication boarders on the psychic. Farmer, too, is right on the money, and one couldn't ask for a crisper drum soliloquy than Philly Joe's statement just prior to the group's retiring this nag once and tor all. Side two is from a recording session on December 8, 1957, not quite a month before the original STRUTTIN' date. The session is of special interest to Sonny Clark aficionados because it teams the pianist with guitarist Kenny Burrell, a particularly supple soloist and a man as deeply rooted in the blues as Clark. (Although Sonny rarely recorded with a guitar player, he can also heard with Burrell on the Stanley Turrentine Blue Note twofer JUBILEE SHOUTS.)
The side opens with "Minor Meeting", a song which first appeared on a very rare recording (only 1000 copies were pressed) that Sonny made with the James Clay/Lawrence Marable band for the Jazz West label in 1956. Like many of Sonny's 32-bar compositions, "Minor Meeting" is constructed on a series of parallel two-bar phrases with a bridge that feeds the soloist right back into the cycle.
Sonny's relaxed. casual attitude during his solo belies the precision of his lines and the almost literary construction of his musical ideas. It's as if his playing is a non-verbal narrative that describes, in equal detail, both the ultimate destination of the journey, and the little flowers along the way. Burrell's solo is brief but to the point, making way for the big tenor sound of Clifford Jordan. He, too, plays a somewhat abbreviated solo, and Sonny comes back for one more chorus before the band states the unison theme.
The melody of "Eastern Incident", another Clark original, is reminiscent of some early George Shearing Quintet material, which may be no accident, as Sonny was a great admirer of Shearing's work. Clifford Jordan finally gets a chance to stretch out here, and his big sound sails great, lazy circles around the changes. (The yachting image is also no accident; several months before this recording, Jordan used Clark on hos own solo outing, titled CLIFF CRAFT, Blue Note BLP 1582.)
After the front line has their strokes, Paul Chambers gets his feature spot. Sonny has met Chambers in Detroit back in 1954, and was immediately struck by the young bassist's "superior conception, choice of notes, and ability to construct lines". By the time this date was recorded, Chambers had joined the Miles Davis band, and all the world heard what Sonny had recognised, and what is so obvious here on his solo.
"Little Sonny" is taken at a brisk tempo, and Burrell's solo is about as frisky as anything he's recorded. Even Clifford Jordan's usually laconic sound has a harder edge, and Sonny seems to pick up on this, throwing his closing phrase back at him, and then running away from the pack, leaving handfulls of the blues in his trail. Pete La Roca's drum solo is absolutely sparce compared to Philly Joe's work on the flip side, providing a nice contrast in styles. With one last, rather abrupt reading of the theme, the song, the side, and the album comes to an end.
- BEN SIDRAN
