Connie Kay: Rhythm and Blues Master
The R&B Roots of Modern Jazz, continued.
Genre is a fact of musical life; nothing exists outside its purview. But drummers playing drumsets have long been double and triple agents, fooling the border guards and working to innovate and revitalize genre conventions.
A working drummer comes by it naturally— if one beat works for style x, and the same beat with just the tiniest modification also works for genre y, are they really different kinds of music?
In this post, I glanced at the recorded legacy of Jimmy Cobb, Philly Joe Jones, Art Blakey, and Elvin Jones in early-Fifties R&B. To be sure, what’s documented is the tip of the iceberg.
But drummer Connie Kay, best known for his decades with the Modern Jazz Quartet, is perhaps the most well-documented and widely-heard jazz drummer to play R&B and rock and roll.
He’s on some big records. It is Connie Kay on Big Joe Turner’s iconic “Shake, Rattle, and Roll”, written by Jesse Stone, released on Atlantic Records. A top-ten hit in 1954 (just as the Modern Jazz Quartet was being formed, with Kenny Clarke on drums) “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” set the stage for a movement.
The song made room in the national psyche for new sounds and new ideas, paving the way for rock and rollers Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and Little Richard, as well as Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and the soul music movement of the Sixties, the Seventies, and beyond.
Connie Kay’s simple backbeat and sophisticated musicianship sit at the heart of “Shake, Rattle, and Roll”.
It’s not easy to swing a group of musicians, regardless of style. If a drummer gives a good feeling in a band, big or small, this is a great drummer.
Connie Kay (born in 1927 as Conrad Kirnon in New York) was a master at generating heat while staying cool. In fact, Kay was the epitome of cool— unflustered and unconcerned, his casual demeanor misdirecting us from the technical and conceptual brilliance.
Like all great jazz drummers, Kay’s signature sound and the locus of his creativity was the ride cymbal. But instead of the low-pitched roar of a K Zildjian ride, then being established as a norm by Art Blakey, Art Taylor, and Mel Lewis, Kay’s ride cymbal was a heavy and high-pitched A Zildjian. Like Max Roach, the net effect was a bold and italicized cymbal beat that sang out in parallel to, or just above, the band.
Further against type was Kay’s beat. Especially at medium tempos with the MJQ, Kay played an almost-even eighth note, de-emphasizing the 3 within the 2. But below the surface, even when his cymbal beat was at its broadest, his snare and bass drum created just the right amount of friction to propel the group forward.
Like most of his peers, Kay had few formal drum lessons, and the few he had didn’t address the drumset. For that, he watched and listened, most closely to Big Sid Catlett (born 1910), the drummer who, along with Jo Jones (born 1911), is most clearly setting the stage for the innovations of Kenny Clarke (born 1914) and Max Roach.
An essential Catlett document is Louis Armstrong and the All-Stars Satchmo At Symphony Hall (see this great article from the Armstrong House) from 1947. A close listen to Big Sid on this record reveals a prominent bass drum and intermittent backbeats, at times strongly suggesting rock and roll drumming.
It’s easy to imagine young professional Connie Kay being asked to play some R&B and thinking, “I saw Sid play this kind of stuff a lot. No problem.”
Oh, they never put your name on a record, anyway. I made Ray Charles' "Greenback Dollar Bill" [Issued as “Greenback”]. I did four tunes with him, including "It Shoulda Been Me." I did all the Ruth Brown records, including "One Mint Julep." I did "Crying In My Own Tears,"too.
I also played on the Clovers' records. I started a certain beat that they began using on other records. I was talking to Dr. John about that. Over in Nice, I helped him get on the bus, and I had just watched his show. So I told him I enjoyed his set. He said, "Hey man! I know you! You're Connie Kay. I know about all those rock'n' roll records you made on Atlantic. I'm hip to you!" [laughs] He said that he had worked at a record company a long time ago, and the company was trying to find out who the drummer was on one of the records I had played on.
Dr. John said, "You were the first guy to do hip shit on rock 'n' roll records. You freed up the guys so they could do something." You see, instead of playing 2 and 4, I used to play on 2, leave the space, and play a bass drum pattern in the space. The 2 and 4 stayed in the hi-hat…
…When we got back, Atlantic wanted [saxophonist Frank] Culley to do a demo record with a group from Washington called the Clovers. We went to the studio for the date to back up the Clovers, and the bass player never showed up. So, I tried to fill in the parts on the bass drum that the bass would have played, along with one beat on the snare. They liked it, and after that, everybody wanted it. Every time I went in the studio, they would tell me, "We want the Clover beat.'' All the other record companies were asking, "Who's the drummer on that record?" because nobody knew what the hell I was doing.
During that time [1951] I started playing with Lester Young, and I kept doing the Atlantic sessions while I worked with Lester. Later, when I joined the MJQ, I had to leave, and the record people said,"We might have to wait until he comes back!" But MJQ turned into a long-term thing. You would be surprised how many session drummers were glad I got the gig with MJQ. [laughs]
—Connie Kay to Jeff Potter, Modern Drummer, February 1987.
Some simple digging around on Modern Drummer, Wikipedia, the Lord Discography, and Discogs.com provided plenty of examples of Connie Kay playing rhythm and blues.
Kay was the drummer for Atlantic Records; every example I’ve selected is an Atlantic release. I’d never realized just how crucial the label was— what Blue Note is to modern jazz, Atlantic seems to be to rhythm and blues.
I’ve linked to some favorite individual tracks, and a created a YouTube playlist as well. This is just a sampling: Kay recorded many more R&B cuts than these.
The Clovers: “Don’t You Know I Love You So” (Ahmet Ertegun), Atlantic, 1951. This is the record with the beat that Dr. John liked; Kay’s simple brush pattern emphasizes beat 2 and is the hook of the track. Along with saxophonist Frank Culley, Kay brings a hint of sophistication to the Clovers’ corner doo-wop.
Big Joe Turner: “Sweet Sixteen” (Ahmet Ertegun), Atlantic, 1952. Just as Kay said, the ‘beat on 2’ became a trend, and here it is again. Pianist Van “Piano Man” Walls looks back to Erskine Hawkins and “After Hours”.
Ruth Brown: “5-10-15 Hours” (Toombs), Atlantic, 1952. And here’s another example of the shuffle and beat 2.
Ray Charles: “The Midnight Hour” (Sam Sweet), Atlantic, 1952. The real after-hours feeling, Kay plays a snare with brushes, tasty and supportive. Sounds easy, but to support Charles’ vocal as Kay does is the height of musicianship.
Ruth Brown: “Wild Wild Young Men” (Ahmet Ertegun), Atlantic, 1953. Up-tempo four, just quarter notes, Kay creates enough momentum to sustain a raucous party atmosphere.
Ray Charles: “It Should’ve Been Me” (Eddie “Memphis” Curtis), Atlantic, 1953. A proto-Chuck Berry comic song, complete with guitar fills and a hint of country music, all anchored by Connie Kay’s big beat. Love that loud fill before the last chorus.
Ray Charles: “Mess Around” (Ahmet Ertegun), Atlantic, 1953. Gospel was going mainstream in the Forties and Fifties, impacting jazz and rhythm and blues as well as launching national stars Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Mahalia Jackson. Here’s a secular gospel rave-up; Kay sticks to the snare and sits right inside the beat.
Big Joe Turner: “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” (Jesse Stone as “Charles Calhoun”), Atlantic, 1954. After a few examples of Kay as a backbeat drummer, he’s now totally identifiable. There’s the gospel music handclaps, and the baritone sax is the perfect touch to create the bawdy after-hours atmosphere.
The Drifters: “Honey Love” (Clyde McPhatter), Atlantic, 1954. Afro-Cuban ballroom dances, especially the rumba, were as important to R&B/rock and roll as gospel and blues. Kay plays a great drumset rumba here, one that must have brought the dancers to the floor.
The Drifters: “Whatcha Gonna Do” (Ahmet Ertegun), Atlantic, 1955. Kay’s shuffle cooly follows the boogie-woogie piano, a la Jo Jones and Count Basie. Lead vocalist Clyde McPhatter mentions “The Hucklebuck” at the end, a dance whose song bares a strong resemblance to Charlie Parker’s “Now’s The Time”.
The Clovers and Lester Young, Big Joe Turner and John Lewis, pop music and Third Stream: the modern world of genre-free mashups has been a working reality for musicians like Connie Kay since the Forties.
Of course, Kay is also in the pop music firmament as the drummer on Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks; his beat on Morrison’s “Like Young Lovers Do” is straight from the MJQ.
These R&B records show that Kay’s flat and even cymbal beat was a choice he made for the MJQ, not an inviolable fact about his playing. That choice partly led Morrison and producer Lewis Merenstein to hire Kay for their album— Astral Weeks can be heard as a sort of Third Stream between folk music and rock-adjacent poetry; bassist Richard Davis (also on Astral Weeks) and Connie Kay are, among other things, Third Stream virtuosos.
But there’s absolutely nothing flat, even, or Third Stream about Connie Kay’s shuffle on the Drifters’ “Watcha Gonna Do”!
I had the opportunity to spend a whole evening with him. Back in 1986 I was 18 and had my first steady gig in a hotel bar for a whole month. The MJQ had played a concert in the same city and came to the hotel afterwards. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of playing Bag's Groove as a welcome. Connie told me later that they hated that song because they had played it so many times. While the other three had retired to their rooms, Mr. Kay was at the bar all evening listening to us. He was quite touched that a German teenager knew about Big Sid Catlett and we chatted during the breaks. He was very warm and complimented me on my playing, although it was certainly far from being really good at the time. I really love his playing and consider him one of my role models who always unpretentiously made the music the main thing.
Love this one, Vinnie, and I learned from it. In the spirit, I hope you won’t mind if I recommend some reading: Jerry Wexler’s ‘Rhythm and the Blues,’ written with David Ritz, is an illuminating peek behind the scenes at “the Blue Note of R&B.” It’s been 20 years or so since I last flipped through it, but some of its vibe and intel has stayed vivid in mind.