Kenny Clarke, known as Klook, invented modern jazz drumming and was fired for it. This deep dive follows him from a Pittsburgh orphanage, where a teacher pushed him toward the snare drum and he composed hymns on a church pump organ, to New York in 1935, where he moved the timekeeping from the heavy bass drum up to the ride cymbal and freed his other limbs to drop bombs. The trombone section at the Savoy Ballroom revolted, Teddy Hill fired him, and then Hill hired him back to run the music at Minton's Playhouse.

From that Harlem laboratory with Thelonious Monk, Charlie Christian, and Dizzy Gillespie, the episode tracks Clarke through a wartime AWOL tour with Dinah Washington, the recording of Birth of the Cool, a founding role in the Modern Jazz Quartet, and his 1955 exit over what he called 18th century drawing room jazz. It ends in Paris,  ...