Jazz Unlimited for Sunday, August 19, 2018 will be “The Music of Sonny Clark.” Pianist Sonny Clark was born in a coal-mining town near Pittsburgh. Apparently self-taught, he began playing professionally while visiting the west coast. He eventually moved to New York and recorded several classic Blue Note recordings before dying at age 32, a victim of the 1950’s heroin epidemic. We will hear him with the Lighthouse All-Stars, his own trio, quintet and sextets, our own Grant Green, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan, Dexter Gordon, Serge Chaloff, Jackie McLean, Curtis Fuller, Buddy DeFranco and Sonny Rollins. Our own John Hicks and John Zoen and the Sonny Clark Memorial Quartet will play his compositions and Bill Evans will play his own composition written in tribute to Clark.
The Slide Show has my photographs of some of the musicians heard on this show.
The Archive of this show will be available until the morning of August 27, 2018.
This is a picture of Sonny Clark and "Philly Joe" Jones at the 1957 Sonny Clark Trio session. The tune is "Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise."
