Recorded on September 1, 1957 at Rudy Van Gelder's home studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, and released in March 1958, 'Sonny's Crib' is a jazz album released by Sonny Clark when he was just 25 years old. He had moved from Pittsburgh to the West Coast and then New York in the early to mid-1950s and immersed himself in bebop, going on to give his personal touch to the sounds emerging from the birthplace of hard bop. Albums from this period often featured "dream teams" of musicians and 'Sonny's Crib' is a prime example. It's his second album as a leader (after 'Dial "S" for Sonny') and the band is notable because it features a fantastic lineup musicians including Donald Byrd, Curtis Fuller, Paul Chambers, Art Taylor and John Coltrane (in his pre-Blue Train period which was recorded just a few weeks later in 1957).

The performance is phenomenal, essential hard bop with some blues and modal elements, with Sonny Clark at the heart of the action. 'Sonny's Crib' that showed that Clark had become one of the best jazz piano talents of that period.