Kenny Clarke
American jazz drummer (1914–1985)
Kenneth Clarke Spearman (January 9, 1914 – January 26, 1985), known professionally as Kenny Clarke and nicknamed Klook, 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").
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he was orphaned about age five and began playing drums when he was eight or nine at the urging of a teacher at his orphanage. He turned professional in 1931 at age 17; four years later, he moved to New York City where he began to establish his drumming style and reputation. 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 serving in the military in the US and Europe from 1943 to 1946, he returned to New York but was mostly based in Paris between 1948 and 1951. He stayed in New York for the next five years, performing with the Modern Jazz Quartet and playing on early Miles Davis recordings. Clarke then moved permanently to Paris, where he performed and recorded with European and visiting American musicians and co-led the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band between 1961 and 1972. He continued to perform and record until shortly before his death of a heart attack in January 1985.
Biography
Early life and career (1914–1935)
Clarke was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on January 9, 1914.
“Kenny Clarke” enters the record as american jazz drummer (1914–1985). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kenny, Clarke and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q346779. VIAF identifies the subject as 116335684. The Library of Congress control number is n81055676. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1914, 1985, 1931 and 1943.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kenny Clarke” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.