Joe Sample, Iconic Jazz Pianist & Composer, Is Dead at 75
Joe Sample, the critically acclaimed pianist and composer that spent more than five decades creating awe-inspiring music that transcended genres and inspired countless musicians, died on Friday, September 12 in his hometown of Houston, TX. He was 75.
Sample’s family confirmed the sad news with a post on his Facebook page, which read: “At 9:50pm (Houston,TX time), September 12, 2014, Joe Sample passed. His wife Yolanda and his son Nicklas would like to thank all of you, his fans and friends, for your prayers and support during this trying time. Please know that Joe was aware and very appreciative of all of your prayers, comments, letters/cards and well wishes.”
Update: It has now been confirmed that Sample died as a result of complications from lung cancer. We previously reported that Sample was hospitalized last year after a cyst went undetected on one of his lungs, causing serious breathing difficulties. This was the latest in a series of health struggles Sample suffered in his final years, including two heart attacks in 1994 and 2009. In his usual upbeat manner, he attributed these struggles to “the vagaries of life, and a little bit of old age.”
While these struggles forced him to cancel a number of shows recently, including a planned three-day residency at London’s Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club last month, the electricity that filled the room whenever he played made it so you could never guess his age.
Joseph Leslie Sample was born on February 1, 1939 in Houston, TX. He found himself enamored shortly after being introduced to the piano at just five years of age, and stuck with the instrument throughout childhood. He eventually went on to study music performance at Texas Southern University, where he teamed up with his old friends saxophonist Wilton Felder, drummer Stix Hooper, trombonist Wayne Henderson, and several other musicians to form The Jazz Crusaders (later, just The Crusaders).
The then-teenagers would travel across the Gulf states, playing dive bars and strip clubs trying to emulate music by the likes of John Coltrane. “There was nothing city-slick about what we did,” Sample told The Independent in 1995 about the group’s musical origins.
The group never graduated from TSU. Instead, they moved from Houston to Los Angeles in the late ’50s to pursue their musical aspirations as a hard-bop group, which was the dominant style of jazz in that era. The group quickly stood out from the crowd for their unique sound, which included Henderson and Felder playing choruses in unison.
This praise gave them the confidence to experiment much more with their music, until they eventually hit on a winning formula by incorporating elements of soul and funk into a unique fusion that effectively pioneered the styles and techniques we continue to hear in contemporary jazz, and other genres, to this day.
“We are the fathers of jazz-funk-fusion,” Henderson told the LA Times in 1995. “We took pop tunes… and did them melodically with a groove, so people could dance if they wanted.”
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