Klook defined the evolution from swing to bop and, in 1961, was already in business for twenty-five years, off to a good start with his European clique in Cologne. 

Did Kenny Clarke invent bebop drumming just by himself just like that? Most of the time, this has been the message given to general lovers of jazz. Of course, Clarke is the main man of modernist drumming, but let’s not forget that all major innovations, even those of Galileo, Einstein, Bach, Van Gogh, Parker, happen within a context of ideas.

Clarke shifted the emphasis from the bass drum to the ride cymbal, changing the small ensemble feeling by playing quarter notes, widening the spectrum with syncopated ‘bombs’ that interacted with horns and piano. His ideas perfectly suited Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and the other experimenters at the famous Minton’s sessions in Harlem in the early 1940’s, relieving the tensions that younger musicians felt existed in swing music.

Note the cymbal rhythm and accents on Stompin’ At The Savoy in 1941, a session with Charlie Christian, Hot Lips Page and Don Byas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxL7LU21l6A&list=RDzxL7LU21l6A&start_radio=1

In 1941, Clarke was already 27-years-old and had matured in the swing era, a period that as rhythm goes, was defined by the likes of Papa Jo Jones. Clarke had played the even 4/4 time in the band of Edgar Hayes in 1937/38, although the Pittsburgh-born drummer laid down weird off-beats here and there, according to Hayes.

Listen to Klook’s snare on Hayes’s Queen Isabella from 1937: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4_r3VeX8LM&list=RDg4_r3VeX8LM&start_radio=1

Bandleader Teddy Hill didn’t like that crazy stuff he heard in 1939 and called the accents ‘kloop-mop’ or ‘klook-mop’. It seemed to be one of the inspirations for the term ‘bebop’. (Oop Bop Sh’Bam, a klook a mop…) and Clarke’s nickname ‘Klook’.

Clarke said that he had already developed ‘bebop’ patterns in the mid-1930’s, cautiously in the band of trumpeter Roy Eldridge, then in the group of saxophonist Lonnie Simmons. In the Downbeat issue of December 5, 1963, Clarke says of his time in Simmons’s band in late 1935 in New York City: “Freddie Green (future Basie guitarist!, FM) and I got something new going with Lonnie’s band at a Greenwich club long before the new rhythmic approach to playing drums was noticed. We’d come to the job early, at least 45 minutes before the other players, and work out patterns. The results were swinging; you could tell. Even the waitresses enjoyed what we were doing.” 

It should be mentioned, nonetheless, that fellow figureheads of drumming, such as Big Sid Catlett, who had experimented with breaking through even beats in swing music, and Papa Jo Jones, who had switched from the omnipresent hi-hat to the ride cymbal now and then, sensed that something in the rhythmic department needed to be challenged.

Note Papa Jo’s switch to cymbal behind Lester Young, not to mention his bass drum accents, on Count Basie’s Shorty George in 1938: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0aMTntG_EA&list=RDa0aMTntG_EA&start_radio=1

Revolution is evolution plus new insights. In the early 1940’s, Clarke had actually fully formed his new style, a unique way of playing that involved not only cymbal time and ‘bombs’ but immaculate detail of tone and exquisite, melodic tinges. Young lions like Max Roach, Tiny Kahn, Stan Levey and Art Blakey expanded on Clarke’s inventions, Roach and Blakey making particularly full use of the drum kit.

The innovation was done, the stylist remained. Oh boy, Klook was a hell of a stylist. After the recording ban in World War II from union leader Petrillo, instigated as part of a beef over royalty payments, Clarke was off to the races, engaged in pure refinement and deepening of his ‘bebop’ skills.

His work with Milt Jackson on Savoy is a prime example. He was a giant with the brushes. Both Hank Jones Trio (1956) and the whole B-side (!) of Miles Davis’s influential Walkin’ (1954) are typically suave, fluent and melodic. (More ‘brushes’ below) Let’s not forget Dexter Gordon’s Our Man In Paris (1963). This is Clarke all-out, mingling with fellow émigre and old friend Bud Powell. And for our Dutch fans, there’s his backing of singer Rita Reys on Jazz Pictures At An Exposition, a live one-off that is marked by tasteful playing by Klook, who bonds remarkably well with bass player Ruud Jacobs.

After his emigration to Paris in 1956, Clarke became one of the American benchmarks for European jazz musicians and eventually founded the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band, which recorded about two dozen albums between 1961 and 1975, a mixture of European class acts and American visitors/expats, somewhat the (popular) European counterpart of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra.

Here’s the embryonic debut of their big band, a meeting between Clarke and the Belgian pianist in café Campi in Cologne, the place of avid jazz fan Gigi Campi. A Blue Note album, engineered by Wolfgang Hischmann, mastered by Rudy van Gelder, true to the label’s high standards, a record that sounds full like Spring blossom, balanced like a Maui surfer on the waves, crisp like French toast.

Crisp and propulsive Clarke and Boland lead a top-rate band through bop-oriented tunes, suavely mixing the unusual sounds of euphonium and alto horn with the customary tenor and trumpet front line. It’s very tasteful, to be expected from the king of understatement and subliminal messages. It’s the economy, stupid. It’s like Klook’s in the act of action painting but instead of coming up with the expected abstract image with many contrasting colors, turns in a perfectly realistic ton-sur-ton landscape.

It features no less than three short solos on snare drum with brushes, all fine examples of meaningful simplicity. Dorian 0437 is a highlight, a suggestive title and sublimely swinging tune that encompasses the mutually inspiring atmosphere of Club Campi, finding the European soloists on fire, notably the late trumpeter Dusko Gojkovich, already a force to reckon with at that time, blending well with our supreme drum innovator and stylist and his Belgian piano pal, who could’ve done worse that debuting with the The Golden 8 as a ‘big band’.

Listen to The Golden 8 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJoRyRgdcRQ&list=RDfJoRyRgdcRQ&start_radio=1