Connie Kay (born Conrad Henry Kirnon; 27 April 1927 – 30 November 1994) was an American jazz drummer.
Kay was a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet from 1955 (replacing original drummer Kenny Clarke) until the group's dissolution in 1974. He was self-taught, and prior to the MJQ he had played in the Lester Young quintet from 1949 to 1955, and also with Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and others. He also played drums on Van Morrison's seminal LPs Astral Weeks, "Saint Dominic's Preview" and on three tracks on Tupelo Honey.
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“Since civilizing children takes the better part of two decades—some twenty years of nonstop thinking, nurturing, teaching, coaxing, rewarding, forgiving, warning, punishing, sympathizing, apologizing, reminding, and repeating, not to mention deciding what to do when—I now understand that one wrong move is invariably followed by hundreds of opportunities to be wrong again.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)