Artist: Kenny Clarke

Kenneth Clarke Spearman 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"). 

He turned professional in 1931 at the age of seventeen, and moved to New York City in 1935, dropped the surname Spearman to become known as Kenny Clarke. 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 touring with the Roy Eldridge band through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio, he returned to Bradley's band based at the Cotton Club in  Cincinnati. He stayed with that band for two years, broken up by a two-month stint with the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra, which at the time included trumpeter Harry Edison and bassist Walter Page, who would go on to be featured in the Count Basie Orchestra. Around this time, he took up the vibraphone, with assistance from Adrian Rollini, a pioneer of the instrument. 

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, he 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. 

He then spent eight months playing drums and the vibraphone in Claude Hopkins's group, before Gillespie gave Clarke an opportunity to join him in the Teddy Hill band in the Savoy Ballroom in 1939.  While playing for this group on a fast tune, he 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 time keeping, 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.

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 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. 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. 

Clarke served in the military from 1943-46, and shortly after being discharged, he converted to Islam and took the name Liaquat Ali Salaam. He joined Dizzy Gillespie's band for eight months, replacing Max Roach, who had become the most important bebop drummer in Clarke's absence. He left Gillespie's band temporarily and worked with Tadd Dameron, Sonny Stitt, Fats Navarro, and his own 52nd Street Boys, before rejoining Gillespie's group in December 1947.

Clarke embarked on a European tour in early 1948, which he considered the highlight of his career. He stayed in Paris until that August, recording, performing, teaching, and helping to select musicians for the First International Jazz Festival. He then returned to New York for nine months to work with Dameron's group at the Royal Roost. During this time, he also played with bassist Oscar Pettiford's band and recorded in the second session of what became the Miles Davis album Birth of the Cool.