Artist: Connie Kay

Conrad Henry Kirnon known professionally as Connie Kay, was an American  jazz and R&B  drummer, who was a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet. 

Self-taught on drums, Kay began performing in Los Angeles in the mid-1940s. His drumming is recorded in The Hunt, the recording of a famous Los Angeles jam session featuring the dueling tenors of Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray  on July 6, 1947. He recorded with Lester Young's quintet from 1949 to 1955 and with Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis. 

Kay did R&B sessions for Atlantic Records in the early to mid-1950s, and he was featured on hit records such as Shake, Rattle and Roll by Big Joe Turner  and Ruth Brown's (Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean. 

Kay joined the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1955, replacing original drummer  Kenny Clarke. He remained through the group's dissolution in 1974 and occasional reunions into the 1990s. In addition to his MJQ compatriots, he had an enduring partnership with cool jazz altoist Paul Desmond through the first half of the 1960s. He played drums on several of Irish singer-songwriter  Van Morrison's albums: Astral Weeks, one song on Saint Dominic's Preview, and four songs on Tupelo Honey. 

In 1989, Kay received an honorary doctorate of music from Berklee College of Music. 

 He also played with Benny Goodman' Orchestra at the Carnegie Hall 40th. Anniversary Concert on January 17, 1978. Kay never recorded as a session leader. 

Further information about Connie Kay is found here.

Photography credit: Harry Pot / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia CommonsThis content was excerpted from the Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Kay, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).