Kenneth Clarke Spearman (January 9, 1914 – January 26, 1985), known professionally as Kenny Clarke and nicknamed Klook, was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. A major innovator of the bebop style of drumming, he pioneered the use of the ride cymbal to keep time rather than the hi-hat, along with the use of the bass drum for irregular accents ("dropping bombs").
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he was orphaned about age five and began playing drums when he was eight or nine at the urging of a teacher at his orphanage. He turned professional in 1931 at age 17; four years later, he moved to New York City where he began to establish his drumming style and reputation. As the house drummer at Minton's Playhouse in the early 1940s, he participated in the after-hours jams that led to the birth of bebop.
After serving in the military in the US and Europe from 1943 to 1946, he returned to New York but was mostly based in Paris between 1948 and 1951. He stayed in New York for the next five years, performing with the Modern Jazz Quartet and playing on early Miles Davis recordings. Clarke then moved permanently to Paris, where he performed and recorded with European and visiting American musicians and co-led the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band between 1961 and 1972. He continued to perform and record until shortly before his death of a heart attack in January 1985.
Early life and career (1914–1935)
Clarke was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on January 9, 1914. He was the younger of two sons born to Martha Grace Scott, a pianist from Pittsburgh, and Charles Spearman, a trombonist from Waycross, Georgia. The family lived on Wylie Avenue in the Lower Hill District of Pittsburgh.
Spearman left the household to start a new family in Yakima, Washington. Scott, who began a relationship with a Baptist preacher shortly afterwards, died suddenly in her late twenties when Clarke was about five, leaving him an orphan. He and his brother were placed in the Coleman Industrial Home for Negro Boys. After trying a few brass instruments, Clarke (at the urging of a teacher) played snare drum in the orphanage's marching band at about age eight or nine. He also played the piano, on which his mother had taught him some simple tunes, as well as the pump organ at the parish church, for which he played hymns and composed pieces that were introduced there.
At age eleven or twelve, Clarke and his brother resumed living with their stepfather, who did not look favorably upon music or associating with those involved with it. Clarke dropped out of Herron Hill Junior High School at 15. Around the same time, their stepfather threw Clarke and his brother out after an argument. Clarke was placed in a foster home without his brother, where he lived for about a year until his 16th birthday. He then took on several odd jobs while establishing his music career, becoming a local professional with the Leroy Bradley Band by 17.
After touring with the Roy Eldridge band through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio, he returned to the Bradley band based at the Cotton Club in Cincinnati. He stayed with them for two years, broken up by a two-month stint with the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra. At the time, the orchestra included trumpeter Harry Edison and bassist Walter Page, who would later be featured in the Count Basie Orchestra. Around this time, Clarke took up the vibraphone with assistance from Adrian Rollini, a pioneer on the instrument.
Move to New York and innovations (1935–1943)
In late 1935, Clarke moved to New York City, where he dropped the surname Spearman and became known as Kenny Clarke. He doubled on drums and vibes in a trio with his half-brother Frank, a bassist and guitarist who had recently moved to New York and likewise changed his surname to Clarke to benefit from Kenny's newfound fame. In 1936, Clarke played alongside guitarist Freddie Green in a group fronted by tenor saxophonist Lonnie Simmons, where he began to experiment with rhythmic patterns against the basic beat of the band.
From April 1937 to April 1938, Clarke was in Edgar Hayes's group, still doubling on vibraphone, where he made his recording debut and traveled overseas for the first time. When he returned to the US with the band, he struck up a personal and musical friendship with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, who had been hired for the group's one-week stint at the Apollo Theater in New York.
In his book Drummin' Men: The Heartbeat of Jazz, music critic Burt Korall writes of this time period:
"Clarke was moving beyond mere functional timekeeping. He had begun to outline and emphasize ensemble, brass, and saxophone figures and to support soloists in the manner that before long would be identified as his. ... The revision of the swing drum style had not yet become fully apparent. But it was clear Clarke was working on something new."
He was encouraged in these endeavors by composer/arranger Joe Garland, who gave him the band's trumpet parts, and suggested that he play along with the brass when he felt it necessary to emphasize or support their lines.
Clarke spent eight months playing drums and the vibraphone in Claude Hopkins's group, before Gillespie gave Clarke an opening to join the Teddy Hill band in the Savoy Ballroom in 1939. While playing for this group on a fast tune, Clarke came upon the idea of using the ride cymbal on his right hand to keep time rather than the hi-hat, an approach that freed up his left hand to play more syncopated figures.
On the bass drum, he played irregular accents (dropping bombs) while using the hi-hat on the backbeats, adding more color to his drumming. With Gillespie, who encouraged this new approach to timekeeping, Clarke wrote a series of exercises for himself to develop the independence of the bass drum and snare drum, while maintaining the time on the ride cymbal. One of these passages, a combination of a rimshot on the snare followed directly by a "bomb", reportedly inspired Clarke's nickname, "Klook", which was short for "Klook-mop", in imitation of the sound this combination produced.
At the 1939 New York World's Fair, Clarke played opposite a band led by fellow drummer Chick Webb, who strongly influenced him and encouraged his rhythmic explorations. He was briefly fired from Hill's band due to unrest in the trombone section about his unorthodox time-keeping methods, but later returned and stayed with the group until it disbanded in 1940. He then worked with bands led by Sidney Bechet, Ella Fitzgerald (where he and Gillespie are said to have co-written the composition "Salt Peanuts"), and Louis Armstrong, before working with Roy Eldridge once again along with the Count Basie Orchestra. He also made recordings with Bechet, Fitzgerald, and Mildred Bailey.
In 1941, Clarke was hired by Hill, who had become the manager of Minton's Playhouse in Harlem, to handle the music at the club. Clarke was given free rein over whom he could hire and which style of music he could play. The house band consisted of trumpeter Joe Guy, pianist Thelonious Monk, bassist Nick Fenton, and Clarke on drums. Regulars at the club included Gillespie and guitarist Charlie Christian, and bandleaders such as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Benny Goodman listened to or participated in the sessions.