Sonny Clark Transcriptions

Birth name: Sonny Clark or Conrad Yeatis Clark
Born: July 21, 1931, Herminie, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died: January 13, 1963 (aged 31), New York City, U.S.

Sonny Clark was an American jazz pianist and composer who mainly worked in the hard bop idiom. Influenced deeply by Bud Powell, Clark nonetheless developed an intricate and hard-swinging harmonic sensibility that was full of nuance and detail. Regarded as the quintessential hard bop pianist, Clark never got his due before he passed away in 1963 at the age of 31, despite the fact that it can be argued that he never played a bad recording date either as a sideman or as a leader.