Joe Sample (1939-2014)

A second member of the Jazz Crusaders—later, simply the Crusaders—has passed away in less than a year. Pianist and keyboard wizard Joe Sample died on Friday, September 12 in Houston at age 75. The cause of death was mesothelioma. Trombonist Wayne Henderson died in April at the age of 74.

Joseph Leslie Sample was born in Houston on February 1, 1939, the fourth child in a family of five. He began playing piano at the age of 5. In addition to Sample and Henderson, the other permanent members of the Jazz Crusaders were Wilton Felder on tenor saxophone and Nesbert “Stix” Hooper on drums. Various people occupied the bass chair over the years. The group began in Phyllis Wheatley Junior High School in Houston, with Sample, Felder and Hooper playing as the Swingsters. When Joe Sample went to Texas Southern University to study piano, he met Henderson and added him to the group.

In 1960, the group members moved to Los Angeles and took the name the Jazz Crusaders as a tribute to the leading hard bop group of the day, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. From the beginning, they incorporated Gulf Coast rhythm and blues influences into their sound. Their first album for Pacific Jazz was Freedom Sound (1961). Joe Sample wrote the rousing title song. For a video of the Jazz Crusaders playing “Freedom Sound” on television in the early '60s, please go to my Wayne Henderson obituary.

All four of the original members shared songwriting duties. Here's another Sample composition, “New Time Shuffle,” from their eighth album, The Thing (1965).  

The Jazz Crusaders recorded 16 albums for Pacific Jazz between 1961 and 1969. As time passed, they simplified their sound, began to cover pop tunes, and released abbreviated single versions of some of their songs. Joe Sample had been experimenting with an electric piano for some time, but in 1970, he switched permanently, electric guitarist Larry Carlton joined the group, and the Jazz Crusaders morphed into the jazz-funk fusion group, the Crusaders. This brought them their greatest commercial success, including five songs that made the R&B charts between 1972 and 1984. One of their songs, “Street Life,” written by Sample and Will Jennings and sung by Randy Crawford, reached #36 on the pop charts in 1979.

Joe Sample released his first album under his own name, Fancy Dance, in 1969. The Crusaders finally broke up in 1987, although there were occasional reunions. In fact, he had been building a solo career for some time. Like many of his contemporaries, he stayed busy moonlighting as a session musician, working with folks like Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell, Tina Turner and Steely Dan. He has released about 20 albums on labels such as Blue Thumb, MCA, Warner Brothers and Verve. Many of them fall into the smooth jazz category, with Sample accompanying his piano with a synthesizer. His 1997 CD Sample This, produced by George Duke, is a sampler featuring re-recordings of many of his more popular songs with the Crusaders and beyond.

A popular feature of Joe Sample's live performances was his celebration of the work of past jazz pianists such as Scott Joplin, Fats Waller and Duke Ellington. Some of these can be found on his 2008 CD, Soul Shadows. This is Jelly Roll Morton's “Shreveport Stomps.”

His final CD, Children of the Sun, is due out this fall. Here are the Crusaders featuring Joe Sample and Wilton Felder doing “I Felt the Love” at the Java Jazz Festival in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2008.

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George Duke (1946-2013)

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