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Located 23 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, Herminie might seem like a small, unassuming Pennsylvanian coal mining community, but it gave the world Sonny Clark, a bona fide giant of jazz piano. Born on Friday, July 31, 1931, he was baptized Conrad Yeatis Clark and, for a few fleeting years, between 1955 and 1961, he was a prolific recording artist for Blue Note Records in New York, laying down classic albums like Sonny’s Crib, Cool Struttin’, and My Conception. But his time in the spotlight was painfully brief; the pianist died from a heroin overdose on Sunday, January 13, 1963. He was 31 years old On Sonny’s Crib, Clark opted to use the sextet format that had worked so well on his debut album, though only trombonist Curtis Fuller remained from that session’s line-up. In came Donald Byrd on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Paul Chambers on bass, and Art Taylor on drums. With a reborn, revitalized Coltrane on board, it was an impressive line-up (earlier in the year, Trane had been fired from the Miles Davis Quintet for unreliability due to drug addiction, but, by September, had quit heroin for good; in late ’57, however, he was re-establishing himself as a major force in jazz). Three of the album’s five tracks are standards. The opener is a swinging take on Rodgers & Hart’s “With A Song In My Heart,” while a jaunty reading of Kurt Weill’s “Speak Low” is propelled by an infectious Latin groove, with Coltrane taking the first solo and displaying his absolute mastery of the tenor saxophone. A wistful take on Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s mournful ballad “Come Rain Or Come Shine” shows the sextet in a reflective mood, with Fuller’s resonant trombone particularly effective. For side two of Sonny’s Crib, Clark reserved two long self-penned tunes. The first is the title song, a classic piece of unadulterated hard bop where the “head” theme draws on “amen” cadences from African-American church music. It then eases into a midtempo swing groove which allows the soloists to stretch out. First in line is Coltrane, who delivers a typically robust but fluid “sheets of sound”-style solo. Closing the LP is “News For Lulu,” another uptempo piece with Latin inflections that is distinguished by adroit ensemble work and stellar solos. Fittingly, Clark leads the first solo on this final track, which reveals his lean melodic style and right-hand melodies that are almost horn-like in their phrasing. Now, Blue Note presents a flat DSD transfer from the Original Analog Master Tapes, recapturing the sound of the session in stunning high-resolution digital formats.