hypersongs

Joe Sample

A Houston keyboardist and composer who co-founded the Jazz Crusaders with high school friends, shaped their move to soul jazz and fusion as the Crusaders, and made solo records including Rainbow Seeker (1978), which holds "Fly With the Wings of Love".

Houston and the Crusaders

Joseph Leslie Sample was born in Houston on February 1, 1939, the youngest son of a mail carrier and a seamstress. He began piano at five and studied with Curtis Mayo. In high school he formed a group, the Swingsters, with the saxophonist Wilton Felder and the drummer Stix Hooper; at Texas Southern University, where he studied piano without taking a degree, the trombonist Wayne Henderson joined, and the band became the Modern Jazz Sextet and then the Jazz Crusaders. In 1960 they moved to Los Angeles, and their first record, Freedom Sound, came out on Pacific Jazz in 1961. In the 1960s they sometimes made four albums a year, moving from hard bop toward a soul-jazz fusion, and in 1971 they shortened the name to the Crusaders.

The core line-up was Sample on piano and keyboards, Felder on saxophone, Henderson on trombone and Hooper on drums, with the guitarist Larry Carlton joining in the mid-1970s according to Wikipedia. The Crusaders had a hit in 1979 with "Street Life", sung by Randy Crawford. The Boston Globe reports that they were the first instrumental act to open for the Rolling Stones on tour and placed 19 albums on the Billboard 200. Sample told JazzTimes in 2003 that they were mostly rebels, and that when everyone was going in one direction they deliberately went the other way.

Solo records and session work

Sample's first solo record, Fancy Dance, a trio set originally titled Try Us, came out in 1969. In 1975 he recorded The Three with Ray Brown and Shelly Manne. His solo catalog took off with Rainbow Seeker (Blue Thumb, 1978) and Carmel (1979), followed by Voices in the Rain (1981), The Hunter (1983, though uDiscover says 1982), Oasis (1985) and Roles (1987), all for MCA or its labels, and then a run on Warner Bros. from Spellbound (1989) to Sample This (1997). Later albums include The Song Lives On (1999, with Lalah Hathaway), The Pecan Tree (2002), Soul Shadows (2004), Creole Love Call (2006, with Nils Landgren), Feeling Good (2007), Live (2012) and Children of the Sun (2014, with the NDR Big Band). A 2003 reunion with Felder and Hooper, Rural Renewal, was released on Verve.

In the 1970s he was also a busy Los Angeles studio player and a founding member of the L.A. Express, which he left after its first album. His session credits include Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, Marvin Gaye, B.B. King, Tina Turner, Eric Clapton and Miles Davis, and a song he wrote with Will Jennings, "One Day I'll Fly Away", was sung by Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge! in 2001. His own "In All My Wildest Dreams", from Rainbow Seeker, has been sampled by Tupac Shakur, De La Soul, Toni Braxton and Arrested Development. He moved back to Houston in 1994, and died there on September 12, 2014, aged 75. Steve Tyrell said of his playing that no matter what he was playing, it always sounded like him, and his manager Patrick Rains called him a seminal figure in the transition from acoustic to electronic music in jazz.

Albums

  • Rainbow Seeker 1978 · Blue Thumb

    An eight-track album of Sample compositions with a long list of Los Angeles guest players.

Songs

  • Fly with the Wings of Love Rainbow Seeker · 1978

    The fifth track on Rainbow Seeker, a seven and a half minute Sample composition with Barry Finnerty on guitar.

Sources

  1. Joe Sample, Wikipedia
  2. Jazz funk pioneer Joe Sample dies, Boston Globe (2014-09-14)
  3. Joe Sample was a jazz crusader at the keyboard, The Globe and Mail
  4. 1978 Joe Sample, Rainbow Seeker, Session Days