Kenny Clarke - Americans Swinging In Paris (2003)

A versatile studio musician, Clarke became an integral member of Dizzy Gillespie's big band, took part in Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool sessions, and emerged as a founding member of the Modern Jazz Quartet. "Kenny Clarke was drummer for all seasons," commented Mike Hennessey in Klook: The Story of Kenny Clarke. "He played everything from military music to musette, from dixieland to avant-garde jazz, passing through gospel, blues, swing, mainstream, pre-bop, bebop, cool." Apart from drums, Clarke played piano, trombone, and vibraphone, and cowrote Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts" and Thelonious Monk's "Epistrophy."