Sonny Clark - Sonny’s Crib (1984 Japanese Blue Note Mono Promo Vinyl LP)

Sonny Clark - Sonny’s Crib | Vinyl LP - 1984 Japanese Blue Note Mono Promo Reissue (BLP 1576, Toshiba EMI)

• Recorded in a single session at Van Gelder’s Hackensack studio on September 1, 1957, with John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Donald Byrd on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Paul Chambers on bass and Art Taylor on drums.
• Coltrane’s only recorded appearance with Sonny Clark, cut two weeks before he walked into the same studio to record Blue Train with Fuller and Chambers beside him again.
• 1984 Japanese mono promo reissue in the Blue Note BLP 1500 series. Manufactured by Toshiba EMI. Cover photo by Francis Wolff, design by Reid Miles, liner notes by Leonard Feather.

Sonny Clark’s second album for Blue Note uses the same sextet format as his debut, Dial “S” for Sonny, with only Curtis Fuller carrying over from the earlier session. The new lineup is hard to argue with. Coltrane was in the middle of one of the most productive stretches of recording in jazz history, cutting sessions for Prestige, Blue Note and his own projects at a pace that seems physically impossible. On Sonny’s Crib he’s a sideman, but he plays like a man who has no off switch. His solo on “Speak Low” is commanding. His work on the thirteen-minute title track, a stop-time blues with a bridge, is the kind of extended improvisation that was starting to define what he’d do next. Two weeks after this session, he went back to Van Gelder’s studio with Fuller and Chambers and recorded Blue Train.

Clark, though, is the leader, and the album makes sense as his record rather than anyone else’s. Side A runs through three standards: Rodgers and Hart’s “With a Song in My Heart”, Kurt Weill’s “Speak Low”, Harold Arlen’s “Come Rain or Come Shine”. Clark’s comping is precise and rhythmically sharp, feeding ideas to the soloists without getting in the way. Byrd takes the lead on the opener. Fuller delivers the opening melody on the ballad. Side B is Clark’s own material: the title track and “News for Lulu”, both originals. Clark would go on to record Cool Struttin’ the following year, along with sessions for Lee Morgan, Jackie McLean, Dexter Gordon and Grant Green. He died in 1963 at thirty-one. Alfred Lion produced. Rudy Van Gelder recorded. Francis Wolff took the cover photograph. Reid Miles designed it. Leonard Feather wrote the liner notes. This copy is a 1984 Japanese mono promo in the BLP 1500 reissue series, manufactured by Toshiba EMI.