Chuck Berry

Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (born October 18, 1926) is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Chuck Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.

Born into a middle class family in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he served a prison sentence for armed robbery between 1944 and 1947. On his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of blues player T-Bone Walker, he was performing in the evenings with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955, and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. With Chess he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching #1 on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name as well as a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis-based nightclub, called Berry's Club Bandstand. But in January 1962, Berry was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines.
After his release in 1963, Berry had several more hits, including "No Particular Place To Go", "You Never Can Tell", and "Nadine", but these did not achieve the same success, or lasting impact, of his 1950s songs, and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgic live performer, playing his past hits with local backup bands of variable quality. His insistence on being paid cash led to a jail sentence in 1979—four months and community service for tax evasion.

Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986, with the comment that he "laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance." Berry is included in several Rolling Stone "Greatest of All Time" lists, including being ranked fifth on their 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll included three of Chuck Berry's songs: "Johnny B. Goode", "Maybellene", and "Rock and Roll Music". Today – at the age of 84 – Berry continues to play live.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry was the fourth child in a family of six. He grew up in the north St. Louis neighborhood known as "The Ville," an area where many middle class St. Louis people lived at the time. His father, Henry, was a contractor and deacon of a nearby Baptist church, his mother Martha a certified public school principal. His middle class upbringing allowed him to pursue his interest in music from an early age and he gave his first public performance in 1941 while still at Sumner High School. Just three years later, in 1944, while still at Sumner High School, he was arrested and convicted of armed robbery after robbing three shops in Kansas City and then stealing a car at gunpoint with some friends. Berry's own account in his autobiography is that his car broke down and he then flagged down a passing car and stole it at gunpoint with a non-functional pistol. Berry was sent to the Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men at Algoa, near Jefferson City, Missouri, where he formed a singing quartet and did some boxing.

After his release from prison on his 21st birthday in 1947, Berry married Themetta "Toddy" Suggs on 28 October 1948, who gave birth to Darlin Ingrid Berry on 3 October 1950.[14] Berry supported his family doing a number of jobs in St. Louis: working briefly as a factory worker at two automobile assembly plants, as well as being janitor for the apartment building where he and his wife lived. Afterwards he trained as a beautician at the Poro College of Cosmetology, founded by Annie Turnbo Malone. He was doing well enough by 1950 to buy a "small three room brick cottage with a bath" in Whittier Street, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
By the early 1950s, Berry was working with local bands in the clubs of St. Louis as an extra source of income. He had been playing the blues since his teens, and he borrowed both guitar riffs and showmanship techniques from blues player T-Bone Walker, as well as taking guitar lessons from his friend Ira Harris that laid the foundation for his guitar style.

By early 1953 Berry was performing with Johnnie Johnson's trio, starting a long-time collaboration with the pianist. Although the band played mostly blues and ballads, the most popular music among whites in the area was country. Berry wrote, "Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering 'who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?' After they laughed at me a few times they began requesting the hillbilly stuff and enjoyed dancing to it."
Berry's calculated showmanship, along with mixing country tunes with R&B tunes, and singing in the style of Nat "King" Cole to the music of Muddy Waters, brought in a wider audience, particularly affluent white people.
In May 1955, Berry traveled to Chicago where he met Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. Berry thought his blues material would be of most interest to Chess, but to his surprise it was an old country and western recording by Bob Wills, entitled "Ida Red" that got Chess's attention. Chess had seen the rhythm and blues market shrink and was looking to move beyond it, and he thought Berry might be the artist for that purpose. So on May 21, 1955 Berry recorded an adaptation of "Ida Red"—"Maybellene"—which featured Johnnie Johnson on piano, Jerome Green (from Bo Diddley's band) on the maracas, Jasper Thomas on the drums and Willie Dixon on the bass. "Maybellene" sold over a million copies, reaching #1 on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues chart and #5 on the 10 September 1955 Billboard Best Sellers in Stores chart.

At the end of June 1956, his song "Roll Over Beethoven" reached #29 on the Billboard Top 100 chart, and Berry toured as one of the "Top Acts of '56". He and Carl Perkins became friends. Perkins said that "I knew when I first heard Chuck that he'd been affected by country music. I respected his writing; his records were very, very great." As they toured, Perkins discovered that Berry not only liked country music, but knew about as many songs as he did. Jimmie Rodgers was one of his favorites. "Chuck knew every Blue Yodel and most of Bill Monroe's songs as well," Perkins remembered. "He told me about how he was raised very poor, very tough. He had a hard life. He was a good guy. I really liked him."
In late 1957 Berry took part in Alan Freed's "Biggest Show of Stars for 1957" United States tour with the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and others. He also guest starred on ABC's The Guy Mitchell Show, having sung his hit song "Rock 'n' Roll Music". The hits continued from 1957 to 1959, with Berry scoring over a dozen chart singles during this period, including the top 10 US hits "School Days", "Rock and Roll Music", "Sweet Little Sixteen", and "Johnny B. Goode". He appeared in two early rock and roll movies.

The first was Rock Rock Rock, released in 1956. He is shown singing "You Can't Catch Me." He had a speaking role as himself in the 1959 film Go, Johnny, Go! along with Alan Freed, and was also shown performing his songs "Johnny B. Goode," "Memphis, Tennessee," and "Little Queenie." His performance of "Sweet Little Sixteen" at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 is captured in the motion picture Jazz on a Summer's Day.
By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name, as well as a lucrative touring career. He had established a racially integrated St. Louis-based nightclub, called Berry's Club Bandstand, and was investing in real estate. But in December 1959, Berry was arrested under the Mann Act after an allegation that he had sex with a 14-year-old Apache waitress whom he had transported over state lines to work as a hat check girl at his club. After an initial two-week trial in March 1960, Berry was convicted, fined $5,000, and sentenced to five years in prison. Berry's appeal that the judge's comments and attitude were racist and prejudiced the jury against him was upheld, and a second trial was heard in May and June 1961, which resulted in Berry being given a three-year prison sentence. After another appeal failed, Berry served one and one half years in prison from February 1962 to October 1963. Berry had continued recording and performing during the trials, though his output had slowed down as his popularity declined; his final single released before being imprisoned was
When Berry was released from prison in 1963, he was able to return to recording and performing due to the British invasion acts of the 1960s—most notably the Beatles and the Rolling Stones—having kept up an interest in his music by releasing cover versions of his songs; along with other bands reworking his songs, such as the Beach Boys basing their 1963 hit "Surfin' USA" on Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen". In 1964–65 Berry released eight singles, including three, "No Particular Place to Go" (a reworking of "School Day"), "You Never Can Tell", and "Nadine," which achieved commercial success, reaching the top 20 of the Billboard 100. Between 1966 and 1969 Berry released five albums on the Mercury label, including his first live album Live at Fillmore Auditorium in which he was backed by the Steve Miller Band.
While this was not a successful period for studio work, Berry was still a top concert draw. In May 1964, he did a successful tour of the UK, though when he returned in January 1965 his behavior was erratic and moody, and his touring style of using unrehearsed local backing bands and a strict non-negotiable contract was earning him a reputation as a difficult yet unexciting performer. He also played at large events in North America, such as the Schaefer Music Festival in New York City's Central Park in July 1969, and the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival in October.

Berry returned to Chess from 1970 to 1973. There were no hit singles from the 1970 album Back Home, then in 1972 Chess released a live recording of "My Ding-a-Ling", a novelty song which Berry had recorded in a different version on his 1968 LP From St. Louie to Frisco as "My Tambourine". The track became Berry's only No. 1 single. A live recording of "Reelin' And Rockin'" was also issued as a follow-up single that same year and would prove to be Berry's final top-40 hit in both the US and the UK. Both singles were featured on the part-live/part-studio album The London Chuck Berry Sessions which was one of a series of London Sessions albums which included other Chess mainstay artists Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. Berry's second tenure with Chess ended with the 1975 album Chuck Berry, after which he did not make a studio record until 1979's Rock It for Atco Records, his last studio album to date.
In the 1970s Berry toured on the basis of his earlier successes. He was on the road for many years, carrying only his Gibson guitar, confident that he could hire a band that already knew his music no matter where he went. Allmusic has said that in this period his "live performances became increasingly erratic, [...] working with terrible backup bands and turning in sloppy, out-of-tune performances" which "tarnished his reputation with younger fans and oldtimers" alike. Among the many bandleaders performing a backup role with Chuck Berry were Bruce Springsteen and Steve Miller when each was just starting his career. Springsteen related in the video Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll that Berry did not even give the band a set list and just expected the musicians to follow his lead after each guitar intro. Berry neither spoke to nor thanked the band after the show. Nevertheless, Springsteen backed Berry again when he appeared at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. At the request of Jimmy Carter, Chuck Berry performed at the White House on June 1, 1979.

Berry's type of touring style, traveling the "oldies" circuit in the 1970s (where he was often paid in cash by local promoters) added ammunition to the Internal Revenue Service's accusations that Berry was a chronic income tax evader. Facing criminal sanction for the third time, Berry pleaded guilty to tax evasion and was sentenced to four months in prison and 1,000 hours of community service—doing benefit concerts—in 1979.
Berry continued to play 70 to 100 one-nighters per year in the 1980s, still traveling solo and requiring a local band to back him at each stop. In 1986, Taylor Hackford made a documentary film, Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, of a celebration concert for Berry's sixtieth birthday, organised by Keith Richards, in which Berry reveals his bitterness at the fame and financial success that Richards achieved on the back of Berry's songs. Eric Clapton, Etta James, Julian Lennon, Robert Cray and Linda Ronstadt, among others, appeared with Berry on stage and film. During the concert, Berry played a Gibson ES-355, the luxury version of the ES-335 that he favored on his 1970s tours. Richards played a black Fender Telecaster Custom, Cray a Fender Stratocaster and Clapton a Gibson ES 350T, the same guitar Berry used on his early recordings.

In the late 1980s, Berry bought a restaurant in Wentzville, Missouri, called The Southern Air, and in 1990 he was sued by several women who claimed that he had installed a video camera in the ladies' bathroom. Berry claimed that he had the camera installed to catch red-handed a worker who was suspected of stealing from the restaurant. Though his guilt was never proven in court, Berry opted for a class action settlement with 59 women. Berry's biographer, Bruce Pegg, estimated that it cost Berry over $1.2 million plus legal fees. It was during this time that he began using Wayne T. Schoeneberg as his legal counsel. Reportedly, a police raid on his house did find videotapes of women using the restroom, and one of the women was a minor. Also found in the raid were 62 grams of marijuana. Felony drug and child-abuse charges were filed. In order to avoid the child-abuse charges, Berry agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana. He was given a six-month suspended jail sentence, two years' unsupervised probation, and ordered to donate $5,000 to a local hospital.
In November 2000, Berry again faced legal charges when he was sued by his former pianist Johnnie Johnson, who claimed that he co-wrote over 50 songs, including "No Particular Place to Go", "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Roll Over Beethoven", that credit Berry alone. The case was dismissed when the judge ruled that too much time had passed since the songs were written.

Currently, Berry usually performs one Wednesday each month at Blueberry Hill, a restaurant and bar located in the Delmar Loop neighborhood in St. Louis. In 2008, Berry toured Europe, with stops in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Poland, and Spain. In mid-2008, he played at Virgin Festival in Baltimore, MD. He presently lives in Ladue, Missouri, approximately 10 miles west of St. Louis. During a New Year's Day 2011 concert in Chicago, Berry, suffering from exhaustion, passed out and had to be helped off stage.



Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (Saint Louis, Misuri, 18 de octubre de 1926), mejor conocido como Chuck Berry; es uno de los más influyentes compositores, intérpretes y guitarristas de rock and roll de la historia.
Es una figura influyente y uno de los pioneros del rock and roll. En la década de los 50, Berry interpretó canciones como "Roll Over Beethoven", "Rock and Roll Music", "Route 66" de Bobby Troup, "Johnny B. Goode" y "Maybellene".
En 1989 publicó su autobiografía.

La revista Rolling Stone lo presenta como el intérprete n.º 5 de toda la historia en su lista "The Immortals" superado solo por The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley y The Rolling Stones.
Charles Edward Anderson Berry nació el 18 de octubre de 1926 en St. Louis, Missouri. Su madre, Martha, era profesora y su padre, Henry, contratista y diácono baptista. Es el tercero de seis hermanos. Estudió en la Simmons Grade School y la Summer High School, esta última la primera escuela de secundaria para afronorteamericanos del oeste de Mississipi, en la que también estudio Tina Turner.
Berry había estado tocando blues desde su adolescencia y a principios de 1953 gracias a su maestro, comienza a ganarse un sobresueldo tocando en la Sir John's Trio una banda que actuaba en un popular club de Saint Louis. Poco más tarde esta banda cambiaría su nombre al de "Chuck Berry Combo". En la ciudad sólo había otra banda que pudiera competir con la de Berry, la de Ike Turner, otro afamado guitarrista.
En 1955 comienza su carrera hacia el estrellato. Aparece en cuatro películas. En mayo, viaja a Chicago donde conoce a Muddy Waters quién le sugiere que entre en contacto con la Chess Records. Firmado el contrato, lanzó en septiembre de ese mismo año "Maybelline". A finales de junio de 1956, su canción "Roll Over Beethoven" alcanzaría el puesto 29. En otoño de 1957, Berry, los Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly y otras pujantes estrellas del incipiente rock and roll se juntaron para tocar en gira por los Estados Unidos.

En diciembre de 1959, Berry tenía problemas legales después de que contratara a una apache menor de edad, que conoció en México, para trabajar en el club Bandstand de su propiedad en Saint Louis. Arrestaron a la muchacha acusada de prostitución y a Berry lo acusaron de tráfico de menores para propósitos sexuales. Fue condenado a pagar una multa de 5.000 dólares y a cinco años en prisión. Salió en 1963.
Ya en los años 1970 Berry viajó durante muchos años con la única compañía de su guitarra Gibson, seguro de que fuera donde fuera podría encontrar una banda que conociera su música a la cual podría contratar.
Después de viajar por los circuitos de viejas glorias de los años 1970, Berry volvía a estar en apuros con la ley en 1979. Poco después de actuar en la Casa Blanca para Carter, le culparon de evasión de impuestos. Fue condenado a cuatro meses de cárcel y a 1.000 horas de servicio a la comunidad mediante conciertos benéficos.

Al final de los 70, Berry continuaba regularmente con su carrera, tocando tanto en los Estados Unidos como al otro lado del océano. Un miércoles de cada mes, actuaba en el "Blueberry Hill", un bar restaurante en Delmar Loop, un barrio de Saint Louis.
Al final de los años 1980, Berry abrió un restaurante en Wentzville, Missouri, al que llamó The Southern Air. También posee un terreno en Wentzville llamado Berry Park, donde durante muchos veranos, Berry dio conciertos de rock. Lo cerró eventualmente al público debido al comportamiento tumultuoso de muchos asistentes.
El documental Hail! Hail! Rock 'n Roll trata sobre él y un concierto que hizo en 1987 junto a Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, y Julian Lennon, entre otros.
Berry volvería a ser tema de atención al principio de los años 90 por su pretendido voyeurismo en los cuartos de baño femeninos de su hogar y restaurante.
Su carácter no es fácil. Frente a sus sentimientos suele levantar un muro de hostilidad. En una ocasión echa del escenario al ínclito Keith Richards cuando éste sube por sorpresa a tocar con su ídolo; en otra ocasión ambos llegaron a las manos en un camerino. Sin embargo no se puede negar que su figura sea una de las más influyentes en la música rock.

Kenny Clarke

Kenny Clarke (January 9, 1914 – January 26, 1985), born Kenneth Spearman Clarke, nicknamed "Klook" and later known as Liaqat Ali Salaam, was a jazz drummer and an early innovator of the bebop style of drumming. 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 Be-Bop, which in turn led to modern jazz. While in New York, he played with the major innovators of the emerging bop style, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Curly Russell and others, as well as musicians of the prior generation, including Sidney Bechet.

Clarke was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1914. Coming from a musical family, he studied multiple instruments, including vibes and trombone, as well as music theory and composition, while still in high school. As a teenager, Clarke played in the bands of Leroy Bradley and Roy Eldridge. He toured around the Midwest for several years with the Jeter-Pillars band, which also featured bassist Jimmy Blanton and guitarist Charlie Christian. By 1935, Clarke was more frequently in New York, where he eventually moved. He worked in groups led by Edgar Hayes and Lonnie Smith, and began developing the rhythmic concepts that would later define his contribution to the music.
While working in the bands of Edgar Hayes and Roy Eldridge, Clarke began experimenting with moving the time-keeping role from the combination of snare drum or hi-hat and bass drum to embellished quarter notes on the ride cymbal, the familiar "ding-ding-da-ding" pattern, which Clarke is often credited with inventing. This new approach incorporated the bombs, or syncopated accents on the bass drum, developed by Jo Jones, while further freeing up the left hand to play more syncopated figures.

Under Roy Eldridge, who encouraged this new approach to time keeping, Clarke wrote a series of exercises for himself to develop the independence of the bass drum and snare drum, while maintaining the time on the ride cymbal. One of these passages, a combination of a rim shot on the snare followed directly by a bass drum accent, earned Clarke his nickname, "Klook", which was short for "Klook-mop", in imitation of the sound this combination produced. This nickname was enshrined in "Oop Bop Sh'Bam," recorded by Dizzy Gillespie in 1946 with Clarke on drums, where the scat lyric to the bebop tune goes "oop bop sh'bam a klook a mop."
Clarke himself claimed that these stylistic elements were already in place by the time he put together the famous house band at Minton's Playhouse, which hosted Monk, Parker, Gillespie, Russell, saxophonist Don Byas and many others while serving as the incubator of the emerging small group sound. The combination of the improvised accents on the snare and bass drum, and the sonority of the ringing ride cymbal carrying the time revolutionized the sound and dynamic of the jazz combo. As producer Ross Russell summed up the role of the ride cymbal:
"The vibration of the cymbal, once set in motion, is maintained throughout the number, producing a shimmering texture of sound that supports, agitates, and inspires the line men. This is the tonal fabric of bebop jazz."
Clarke's innovation set the stage for the development of the bebop combo, which relied heavily on improvised exchanges between drummer and soloist to propel the music forward. For this, "every drummer" Ed Thigpen said, "owes him a debt of gratitude."

While playing at Minton's, Clarke made many recordings, most notably as the house drummer for Savoy Records. When the musicians from the Minton's band moved to different projects, Clarke began working with a young pianist and composer John Lewis and vibraphonist Milt Jackson. With the addition of bassist Ray Brown, they formed the Modern Jazz Quartet, or MJQ. The group pioneered what would later be called chamber jazz or third stream, referring to its incorporation of classical and baroque aesthetics as an alternative to hard bop, the bluesier successor to the bebop combo sound which emerged in the mid-fifties. Clarke stayed with the MJQ until 1955, when he began contemplating a move to Paris, where he eventually relocated in 1956. Clarke had toured Europe numerous times going all the way back to a stint in the Army during the mid 40's. He was undoubtedly attracted to the better pay he could earn in France: "Why not stay here?" Ira Gitler quotes him as saying, "I earn a good living, a very good living." It is also possible that, like many African American expatriate musicians and writers, he was attracted to the better social treatment he received there. As soon as he moved to Paris, he regularly worked with visiting American musicians in, as well as forming a working trio, known as "The Bosses", with Bud Powell, also a Paris resident, and Pierre Michelot.
Later in 1961, with Belgian pianist Francy Boland he formed a regular big band, The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band, featuring leading European and expatriate American musicians, including among many others, Johnny Griffin and Ronnie Scott on tenor saxes. The big band, which had been the idea of Italian producer Gigi Campi, lasted for eleven years.

After 1968 Kenny Clarke played and recorded with the French composer and clarinettist Jean-Christian Michel for 10 years.
Clarke continued recording and playing with both visiting U.S. musicians and his regular French band mates until his death. In 1988, he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.
Clarke died in 1985 in Montreuil, France.




Kenneth Spearman Clarke (n. Pittsburg; 9 de enero de 1914 - f. París; 26 de enero de 1985), baterista estadounidense de jazz.
Músico altamente influyente que ayudó a definir la batería dentro del bebop. Fue el primero en cambiar el ritmo que controlaba la entrada y salida desde el tambor bajo hacia el címbalo, una innovación que ha sido copiada y utilizada por un número incontable de baterías desde principios de la década de 1940.

Durante su etapa escolar, Clarke tocaba el vibráfono, el piano y el trombón, además de la batería. Tras tocar con Roy Eldridge (1935) y la Jeter-Pillars band, Clarke se unió a la Big Band de Edgar Hayes (1937-1938). Hizo su grabación de debut con Hayes y demostró ser uno de los baterías con más swing de la época. Una gira europea con Hayes le proporcionó a Clarke la oportunidad de liderar su propia sesión. Siguieron colaboraciones con las orquestas de Claude Hopkins (1939) y Teddy Hill (1940-1941) y después dirigió la banda del Minton's Playhouse (en la que estaba Thelonious Monk).
Las legendarias sesiones after-hours estuvieron llenas de bop y fue durante esta época que Clarke modernizó su estilo y recibió el apodo de "Klook-Mop" (más tarde abreviado como "Klook") debido a las 'bombs' irregulares que tocaba más allá de los solistas. Batería flexible, Clarke tuvo todavía la posibilidad de participar con las orquestas tradicionales de Louis Armstrong y Ella Fitzgerald (1941), y con los combos de Benny Carter (1941-1942), Red Allen and Coleman Hawkins. También grabó con Sidney Bechet. Sin embargo, tras su servicio militar, Clarke se centró en el campo del bebop, trabajando con la big band de Dizzy Gillespie y dirigiendo su propia sesión moderna. Co-escribió "Epistrophy" con Monk y "Salt Peanuts" con Gillespie. Clarke trabajó a finales de la década de 1940 en Europa, estuvo con Billy Eckstine en Estados Unidos en 1951 y fue miembro original del Modern Jazz Quartet (1951-1955).1 No obstante, se sintió demasiado atado a su música y abandonó el Modern Jazz Quartet para trabajar de forma libre, participando en multitud de grabaciones durante 1955 y 1956, sobre todo con Miles Davis.

En 1956, Clarke se marchó a Francia donde se asentó, colaboró con todas las estrellas americanas que se acercaron de gira a Europa y tocó con Bud Powell y Oscar Pettiford en un trío llamado The Three Bosses (1959-1960). Clarke fue co-líder con Francy Boland de una legendaria big band, el Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band, formada por grandes estrellas (1961-1972). Después de 1968, Kenny Clarke trabajó durante 10 años con el clarinetista y compositor francés Jean-Christian Michel.