Last year, Mosaic Records, the respected jazz reissue label, released a six-CD box set of recordings by pianist Conrad Yeatis “Sonny” Clark (1931-1963), originally released by Blue Note records from 1957 to 1961. No longer a cult figure, Clark is now viewed worldwide as both a titan of the hard bop style and a Pittsburgh jazz icon.
Most of Pittsburgh’s jazz luminaries came from the city or Allegheny County. Others were natives of surrounding counties including Westmoreland County. Pianist Johnny Costa, longtime music director of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” hails from Arnold, Pa. Herminie, Pa. in the heart of Westmoreland’s coal mining country, was Clark’s birthplace in 1931. His father Emory, a mine worker, played organ.
The Clarks had quite a journey. As Sam Stephenson’s incisive, two-part 2011 “Paris Review” article explains, “(Clark’s) parents came from rural, Jim Crow Georgia and moved to Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, so Sonny’s father could work in the coke yards of Jones & Laughlin Steel. They were chased away by KKK activity there and ended up in a company coal-mining village that reminded them of their rural Southern home near a rock quarry. “
After opening a mine in Sewickley Township in 1893, the Ocean Coal Company built an adjoining town, or “patch” to house workers, both were named for Herminie Berwind, the company president’s wife. A second nearby mine/village became Herminie No. 2. Like nearby mining towns, both Herminies were overwhelmingly white and heavy on European immigrants, yet African-Americans were part of the workforce.
Emory Clark died of black lung 12 days after his son’s birth. At four, Sonny began playing piano and attended a local grade school with white students. As he grew, he entertained at Herminie’s sole African-American hotel. After the family relocated to Pittsburgh, Sonny, viewed now as a wunderkind, performed at a 1946 jazz gala at Syria Mosque.
A 1951 Southern California visit exposed him to the new, vital “West Coast” jazz scene developing there, rooted in the bebop style. Clark settled there and built a reputation playing jazz venues like the Lighthouse and Surf Club alongside Art Pepper and other rising giants. He accompanied others on records, toured Europe with guitarist Jimmy Raney and vibraphone star Red Norvo and was prominent on baritone sax man Serge Chaloff’s landmark “Blue Serge” LP.
While backing singer Dinah Washington on a 1957 tour, he came to New York and dove into the active scene in Manhattan. Alfred Lion, owner of Blue Note Records, one of the independent jazz labels focusing on hard bop (a funkier variation of bebop), signed Clark. He recorded his own albums for the label and masterfully accompanied others on their records, becoming Blue Note's de facto house pianist.
Clark’s style reflected the influences of bop piano fountainheads Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. Whether a song was upbeat or contemplative, he unleashed inventive, occasionally quirky ideas reflecting sophistication and at times, a playful side. On “Cool Struttin’,” one of his best known tunes, he adds sly quotes from other tunes and spins clever, bluesy lines.
Tragically, he was caught in another whirlwind: the heroin addiction that claimed so many jazz icons from the 30’s to the 80’s. He did time in New York on drug charges, yet continued working. The hard living finally caught up with him when he died Jan. 13, 1963. Wealthy jazz patron Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter notified his family. According to Stephenson’s research, it’s never been certain the body shipped home, now interred in Sharpsburg’s Greenwood Cemetery, was actually Clark’s.
Shortly after his death, fellow piano giant and friend Bill Evans wrote and recorded the elegiac “NYC’S NO LARK” (an anagram), for his landmark 1963 LP “Conversations with Myself.” Yet beyond the “jazz cognoscenti,” Clark fell into obscurity until an unexpected groundswell of interest in the 70’s from Japanese jazz fans brought forth reissues of his released and unreleased material. That interest — in Clark and the Blue Note label —spread and hasn’t abated, leading to the Mosaic box.
Currently, only two Pittsburgh jazz icons, Billy Strayhorn and Mary Lou Williams, are honored with historic markers in their communities. Many others merit such recognition — among them, the kid from Herminie No. 2.