Sonny Clark’s final album as a leader is one of the great Blue Note hard bop records — a November 1961 session at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio with Tommy Turrentine, Charlie Rouse, Butch Warren, and Billy Higgins that swings with an ease that belies how little time Clark had left. Fourteen months after this recording, he was gone at thirty-one. The album also features a rare guest appearance from Ike Quebec on the ballad “Deep in a Dream” — Quebec himself would die just three days after Clark, making this session a quietly devastating document of two Blue Note pillars in their final chapter.

In this episode of Deep in the Stacks, we trace Clark’s path from the Blue Note sideman benches to the leader’s chair, and listen to the record that proved Cool Struttin’ was just the beginning.

Sonny Clark

Conrad Yeatis “Sonny” Clark (1931–1963) grew up in a coal-mining town outside Pittsburgh and began playing piano at four. After relocating to California in 1951 and New York in 1957, he became one of Blue Note Records’ most relied-upon pianists — recording as both leader and sideman across dozens of hard bop sessions. His key albums as leader include Cool Struttin’ (1958), Sonny’s Crib (1957), and Leapin’ and Lopin’ (1961). He appeared as sideman on John Coltrane’s Blue Train, Dexter Gordon’s Go!, and dozens more.

Clark died of a heroin overdose on January 13, 1963, at thirty-one. Bill Evans honored him with the composition “NYC’s No Lark” — an anagram of his name — on Conversations with Myself later that year. Explore more episodes.

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Blue Note BST 84091 · Original stereo pressing

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