Blue Train Foil or The Curious Case of 1577 & 1576Listen to enough Blue Note records and you'll end up playing archaeologist as you start to unearth some of the history buried in these records. Listen to enough Music Matters Blue Note releases and you'll come to the realization that someone in that company is very fond of Sonny Clark and Tina Brooks. Makes perfect sense, both are artists who never achieved wide acclaim and fame they deserved in their lifetime, both passed away too early and among Blue Note collectors both have a cultish following. This week's post will center around Sonny Clark's 1958 classic
Sonny's Crib BN1576.
BackgroundIn Mid September, 1957 Sonny Clark served as the pianist for the sextet that recorded John Coltrane's
Blue Train BN1577. Roughly three weeks later Clark would lead a virtually identical sextet back in RVG's studio to record his second BN album,
Sonny's Crib. This time Clark, Coltrane, Chambers and Fuller are joined by Donald Byrd who is substituting for Lee Morgan and Art Taylor who fills in for Philly Joe Jones. A curious oddity about these two sessions and the resulting albums is that though Clark's record was recorded after Coltrane's, and would not see release till 1958 alfred Lion assigned it an earlier catalog number
1576. On the other hand
Blue Train which is designated with the immortal
1577 catalog number would be released in 1957 ahead of
1576.
There are a multitude of explanation for this discrepancy in the the release of these two records, but for me the more plausible reasoning is that Alfred Lion initially planned on releasing Clark's album
1576 before Coltrane's
1577 because Clark was already a Blue Note veteran with an album under his name and Coltrane was a new kid on the Blue Note block who has not yet proven himself. However, after evaluating both sessions Lion was heavily swayed by the originality and musical prowress of Coltrane that he scrambled his release schedule and moved
1577 ahead of
1576. Furthermore, Lion, with keen ears for Jazz equally realized that without
1577 there will be no
1576. Hence releasing
1576 as a follow up to
1577 made all the more sense.
Of course we all realize how brief Trane's association with Blue Note lasted, as he was off to Atlantic by 1958 and would quickly release
Giant Steps by 1959 and
My Favorite Things by 1960. But one thing is for certain, while he was at Blue Note Coltrane left an indelible mark on Sonny Clark's music. As for Clark, his next album,
1588 would become one of the most iconic BN album of all time.
The MusicDue to personnel and proximity of the session dates much of the music on
1576 bear a strong affinity to what is on
1577. Right out of the gate on the Rodgers and Hammerstein opening number
With A Song In My Heart Donald Byrd--who always struck me as a stylist on trumpet--is in a full fledged fire breather mode as he burnishes his phrasings with more brass than Lee Morgan can shake a broom at. On the next tune
Speak Low (Kurt Weill) Sonny Clark demonstrates that he isn't just content to follow in the trails of
1577 alone by introducing a latin meter into the arrangement of this song. The effect is fantastic and it disrupts the monotony of what would otherwise have been a plain Jane Hard Bob treatment of the number. Side A concludes with a touching rendition of the old standard
Come Rain or Come shine. It's a ballad and a ballad need not be anything more than beautiful and moving.
Side B features two Clark originals; first, there is the title number
Sonny's Crib. The song itself is the antithesis of Coltrane's
Blue Train. Here the musicians seem to echo the the title number from
1577 by indirect means. The notes remind me of
Blue Train except here everyone is consciously playing in the opposite direction. The listener is constantly being reminded of
Blue Train approaching the station but never arriving. Even the arrangements of both songs are eerily similar down to the manner in which Coltrane picks up the opening solo after the 2nd round of group intro. This is simply one of Clark's strongest statement as a composer. The final number by Clark
News For Lulu is a funky harbinger of the groovy movers Clark will soon unleash on his next BN LP,
1588.When all is said,
1576 is a great record that is uniquely situated between
1577 and
1588. It's a record that receives less attention than it deserves because it's been overshadowed by those two records, but I doubt that anyone's appreciation of those other records will ever be complete until they've taken the time to kick back at
Sonny's Crib. 
It would be hard to disagree however that Sonny's Crib and Blue Train (the compositions) strongly resemble each other. Seeing that Blue Train was recorded first, I agree that it would seem that Clark was influenced by Trane in writing Sonny's Crib. I have noticed this similarity for a while now. I've listened carefully to other similar blues-y stuff from that period and noticed that the call and response of Blue Train was a somewhat common occurrence in jazz composition around this time (Moanin' would follow suit a year later). But Trane might have been the first to strip it that far down to its barest essentials.
