Kenny Clare (1929–84)
An enthusiastic and gifted all-round percussionist, Kenny Clare was a jazz drummer known for his performances with fellow drummer Kenny Clarke and for accompanying singers including Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett and Cleo Laine.
Born in Leytonstone, London, Clare learned to play the drums at the age of 13. During his national service with the RAF, he played with service bands, including those led by Oscar Rabin, Jack Parnell and Johnny Dankworth. After the war, he played with the Dankworth band for five years before moving to the Ted Heath Orchestra.
Clare stood in for Kenny Clarke between 1963 and 1966 in the Kenny Clarke–Francy Boland Big Band when Clarke was unavailable. From 1967 for four years Clarke and Clare played together as a two-drummer band for performances and recordings.
In the 1970s Clare worked with a number of bands as well as playing in studio orchestras for recording sessions, television and radio programmes, and on film soundtracks.
He worked in the 1980s predominantly with Johnny Dankworth and singer Cleo Laine before his death from cancer in 1984.
In 2015, Clare was honoured with the installation of a commemorative Blue Plaque on his east London home in Richmond Road, Leytonstone, London.
Biography by John Rosie
Every night
In an interview in 1973, drummer Kenny Clare chats about touring with Tony Bennett and playing with Count Basie’s band. His description of the US music scene is “a little bit depressing”.
Read the original article in Crescendo, January 1973, p23
Kenny Clare: Interview 2
Image Details
| Interview date | 1st January 1969 |
|---|---|
| Interview source | Jazz Professional |
| Image source credit | |
| Image source URL | |
| Reference number | |
| Forename | Kenny |
| Surname | Clare |
| Quantity | 2 |
Interview Transcription
For about four months now, on and off, I’ve been travelling with Tony Bennett. We worked our way all over the States, and it’s been very enjoyable. A great experience, in point of fact. We did two weeks with Count Basie’s band—which was fantastic for me, you know, to play with that band. And we also had some other very fine bands at various places, like San Francisco, Dallas, New York. The concert we did at the Hollywood Bowl was really beautiful in every way—with the Los Angeles Symphony, augmented by a few big–deal studio players.
To me, the music scene in the States didn’t look too healthy. Jazz seems to be getting into even smaller rooms and darker cellars. Apart from the Half Note, that’s just opened up on 54th Street in Manhattan now, as opposed to being down in the Village—that’s a nice club now. But basically, with Shelly Manne’s closing and everything, it looks a little bit depressing, quite honestly. Still, we’ll see.
But I also spent a fantastic time down at North Texas State University, where they have the Lab Band. I played with the One O’Clock band, and I heard the Two O’Clock band. I talked to a whole bunch of drummers there, and it was just tremendous, because I’ve known Leon Breeden for a while, anyway, and we had two or three guys from the band on the gig we were doing in Dallas; so one of them took me over one day.
That’s certainly a very good thing for the future—to see these young kids. Well, some of ‘em are not young, but the fact that they’re that interested, to go to college and to play together like that—it’s great. It’s hard to explain, the whole thing. It’s just an incredible experience, to see all these people running from classes with their instruments to play in the band, then run back again, then try and get their practise in at some time, you know. So it seems that not all youth is messed up, one way or the other. These certainly aren’t, anyway.
As you know, I’ve been to the States a few times, anyway, and know a lot of people there, as well as having worked for a lot of Americans over here. But I’ve really got no intention of staying there. I mean, it’s nice for me to visit there, because I have many, many friends, particularly drummers that I’ve known for years, and various other musicians, relations and so on; so I have a very nice time when I go.
I still like England. I love England, in fact. I don’t want to leave it—no way! To be quite honest, I don’t really know why I should be considered a singer’s drummer. I try to play behind singers as if they were horn players; you catch the build–ups with them, and try to fit with what they’re doing. And good singers don’t sing the same every time—that’s the fun of the gig. Like, Tony never really sings the song the same ever. So this is a great kick, and it keeps you awake. I enjoy playing with singers.
I enjoy playing with bands, too—but this gig is perfect, because I get a bit of both. I always get a big band and a good rhythm section to play with, good charts and a good singer. Now what more can you want than that? There’s no playing down—I’ve got the wet suit to prove it!
Tony? He’s fantastic; a real artist. Every night’s like a first night—and that’s the way it has to be. I couldn’t work with anybody who didn’t have that kind of spirit. I certainly have that kind of approach to it; otherwise you would get bored to tears. And I don’t need to travel three or four thousand miles to get bored!
I can’t say I regret anything I’ve ever done. I’ve always wanted to do whatever I was doing at the time, as good as I could. That’s the only ambition I’ve ever had. Just to play that gig that night, to the best of my ability, and hope I was working tomorrow! Really, that’s it. If I ever sit down and think about all the things that have happened to me, it’s beyond the wildest dreams I had when I was a kid.
I like pop music, too, and I enjoy playing it—that’s another challenge. Everything’s a challenge, really. The hardest challenges, and the ones that are really very satisfying, are when it’s completely against what you want to play, or like to play. It might be a Come Dancing, or something like that, but the fact that that’s not the normal way you do things makes it even more of a challenge to do it without making them look round and say: “What the devil’s going on back there?” Fitting in with whatever the situation is, that’s to me very satisfying.
This has kept me going. Sometimes it’s hard in studio work to maintain interest, because it can be boring if you let it be. It doesn’t have to be. I always get annoyed when pop groups put down studio players as having no feeling or anything. This is not really true at all; they really do have a tremendous feeling. They’re also very professional, obviously, and they can get the required feeling very quickly.
When they gloss over all the rest of it, that’s annoying. Session men are just as keen to do a good job. I know there’s been one or two instances where the amalgamation of studio musicians and pop group players hasn’t come off—but it’s really only very isolated cases. Normally, it’s a very good union between the two, with give and take on both sides. Most professionals are very willing to let the other side of things come through. You can lose a certain kind of feeling professionally, I guess, but —well, you just mustn’t; that’s all there is to it.
I’ve always tried to put a little bit of myself in, whatever the situation is. Even if it’s sometimes funny. It brings to mind a thing I once did with Tony Fisher in Sweden. It was with a real old—time kind of act, in a show based on The Good Old Days that is on BBC—TV; apparently it’s very popular there. We had a kind of an old time jazz thing to play, but we didn’t take the mickey out of it; we played it in the idiom. We kept playing this same one chorus round and round, and repeating a certain funny thing in the middle eight. In the end, we couldn’t play for laughing! Nobody would have even noticed who didn’t know what was going on, and we weren’t upsetting anybody; it was just something that was pretty funny to us.
Copyright © 1969, Tony Brown. All Rights Reserved.
