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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“Most literature on the culture of adolescence focuses on peer pressure as a negative force. Warnings about the “wrong crowd” read like tornado alerts in parent manuals. . . . It is a relative term that means different things in different places. In Fort Wayne, for example, the wrong crowd meant hanging out with liberal Democrats. In Connecticut, it meant kids who weren’t planning to get a Ph.D. from Yale.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)