Billboard 05/19/1958
Three stars

Six highly attractive sets by the trio. Clark‘s piano mastery is nicely support by Paul Chambers on bass and “Philly” Joe Jones on drums. Usually showcased with larger groups, Clark is given ample room here to show his fleet, clean style with just a trio. He sounds best on I’ll Remember April. Other tunes include Two Bass Hit and Softly as in a Morning Sunrise. Good potential.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 05/25/1958
When Good Ones Work Together, The Intermeshing Is Amazing

The best jazz improvisation in some ways comes when the musicians have worked together long enough so that they know and can anticipate each other. This is true, of course, only if the quality of their musical inspiration is good. It is no help to work with a dull musician.

But when two good ones work together and get to know one another, they can merge into a unity in their playing which is quite remarkable. You will find a beautiful example of this in the two new Sonny Clark LPs, Sonny Clark Trio (Blue Note 1579) and Sonny’s Crib (Blue Note 1576).

On the first, Clark is accompanied by Philly Joe Jones on drums and Paul Chambers on bass. These two men have worked together for most of the last three years as members of the Miles Davis Quintet and on numerous recording dates. This constant exchange of ideas, sometimes for as much as 12 hours at a stretch and often every night for months, has resulted in a really amazing intermeshing of musical thought which is evident as they accompany Clark on this LP.

On the other album, Clark’s accompaniment includes Chambers again but there is a different, even though excellent drummer, Art Taylor. The difference between Taylor’s and Jones’ manner of working with Chambers is evident on close listening. With Taylor the basic rhythm is kept flowing correctly at all times but that is really all. With Jones the basic rhythm is kept going, but on top of it there are countless other points of embellishment either by use of other sounds on the drums or by the way in which he anticipates Chambers and works as a unit with him.

Jones, by the way, is by far the best drummer playing today in almost any contest. He has a Riverside LP coming out shortly in which he has written and performed a drum suite that should be a real tour de force.

The discussion of the rhythm accompaniment does not mean to imply that it is the only point of value about these albums. Clark has developed into an excellent pianist in the Horace Silver–Bud Powell tradition with a wonderful directness and earthy concept that is impressive to hear. For Clark’s own work, I like the trio LP best, perhaps because of the inspiration of Jones and Chambers as a rhythm section.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 08/17/1958

This is Sonny‘s first LP as leader of the trio. Paul Chambers is on bass and Philly Joe Jones is on drums. Generally speaking, a very satisfactory album of good modern jazz without being outstanding.

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Down Beat : 07/24/1958
Martin Williams : 2.5 stars

A Bud Powell-ish recital (but not the cocktail manner that some have made of Powell’s style) with some references to Horace Silver and others.

Bebop is very fast, too long, and has what one wouldn’t bother too much about if it weren’t for the frequent conventionality of the phrases and motifs involved – technical falterings fingering that seem to be to be too frequent. (Maybe the campaign for “more blowing space” should be countered by one for less blowing space.)

Time is done largely in Powell’s bouncy manner. Hit (now better known as LaRonde) has some very nice if not exactly daring rhythmic effects. Delight has the best balance among tempo, ideas, and length and is a good performance – especially in some effective things Clark does to the melody in trading eights with Jones in the last chorus.

Sunrise has a lot of quite literal reference to the MJQ‘s recording, besides some very fluent playing of Clark’s own. April is played unaccompanied in free tempo, with cadenzas and arpeggios. Clark meant to counteract the up-tempo treatments, which he says have denied its lyric quality. He is right, and he shows a side of his ability the other numbers do not. Could it have been done lyrically and in tempo?

I once heard Clark step into a quintet and play with a fullness, strength, and range that made the work of the previous pianist sound like water. But this is a long solo exposure.

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Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

This is Sonny Clark‘s first trio session. Introduced to Blue Note aficionados with his first band date on Dial “S” for Sonny, 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 sixteen miles southeast of Pittsburgh, called Herminie, PA – population about 800. I was raised there till I was twelve, then lived in Pittsburgh until I was nineteen, just turning twenty; 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, USA.”

“That’s where the gaps began 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, CA 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. Stan Levey, Frank Rosolino and Conte Candoli were a very big help; of course they all work 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 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 “be-bop” 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 1944 Gillespie treatment.

I Didn’t Know What Time It Was, a 1939 … melody, is taken medium-fast, with Paul Chambers’ 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 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‘ BLP 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 sixteen 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 of the melody or doubling of 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 prefect answer to your unspoken but not unheeded request.