Sonny Clark Blue Minor (1958)

Conrad Yeatis Sonny Clark (July 21, 1931 January 13, 1963) was an American jazz pianist and composer who mainly worked in the hard bop idiom. Clark was born and raised in Herminie, Pennsylvania, a coal mining town east of Pittsburgh. His parents were originally from Stone Mountain, Georgia. His miner father, Emery Clark, died of a lung disease two weeks after Sonny was born. Sonny was the youngest of eight children. At age 12, he moved to Pittsburgh. While visiting an aunt in California at age 20, Clark decided to stay and began working with saxophonist Wardell Gray. Clark went to San Francisco with Oscar Pettiford and after a couple months, was working with clarinetist Buddy DeFranco in 1953. Clark toured the United States and Europe with DeFranco until January 1956, when he joined The Lighthouse AllStars, led by bassist Howard Rumsey. Wishing to return to the east coast, Clark served as accompanist for singer Dinah Washington in February 1957 in order to relocate to New Y