Sonny Clark Trio - Sonny Clark Trio (1978 Japanese Blue Note Stereo LP)

Vinyl: EX
Sleeve: VG+
Obi: None

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Sonny Clark Trio - Sonny Clark Trio | Vinyl LP - 1978 Japanese Blue Note Stereo (GXK 8051, Blue Note Masterpiece Selection 150, King Record Co. Ltd.)

Sonny Clark recorded three albums for Blue Note in a three-month burst in 1957. The first two, Dial 'S' for Sonny and Sonny's Crib, used larger groups with horns. This one put him in front with only Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones.

The album opens with "Be-Bop," Gillespie's bebop theme, and Clark plays it for nearly ten minutes. It is not the most harmonically complex piece in the bebop repertoire, but that is partly the point — the trio uses its relative simplicity to stretch and improvise rather than navigate. Chambers's bass lines are prominent throughout; Jones plays with the loose authority he brought to everything in this period. "I Didn't Know What Time It Was," the Rodgers and Hart standard from Too Many Girls (1939), follows at medium tempo. "Two Bass Hit," by Gillespie and John Lewis, closes Side A.

Side B opens with Tadd Dameron's "Tadd's Delight," another bebop head given a long, open treatment. "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise", Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein II's piece from The New Moon (1928), runs six and a half minutes, Clark's phrasing more searching than his Side A playing. "I'll Remember April," the Gene de Paul, Don Raye and Patricia Johnston standard from 1941, closes the record.

This is the 1978 Japanese Blue Note stereo pressing (GXK 8051), Blue Note Masterpiece Selection 150, manufactured by King Record Co. Ltd.