Jazz pianist Joe Sample’s gig at Blues Alley is a celebration of both the timelessness of his music, the nurturing of a son in his musical career and, at the age of 71, his tremendous popularity in a business that easily takes its toll on lesser artists.
“I’m a little surprised that I’m back so soon,” Sample said. “I was here maybe nine months ago; usually you work a place once a year.”
But no Blues Alley booking is ever done indiscriminately.
“There’s always good vibes when he’s here,” Blues Alley staff member Lou Valdez said. “His piano, bass and drums are a great presence in the room.”
As a young student of the iconic organ and piano player, the now-deceased Curtis Mayo, Sample has enjoyed an unbelievably successful solo career since the early 1980s. He has performed as guest pianist on many recordings by other performers and groups, including Miles Davis, George Benson, B.B. King, Eric Clapton and Steely Dan. Sample incorporates jazz, gospel, Latin, blues and even classical forms into his music.
During his high school years in Houston, he and a couple of friends formed a group called the Swingsters, where, he recalls, “we played in the living room of one of the band member’s mother’s.” A series of what he described as “silly bosses” that he worked for part-time while finishing up high school made him realize that he would “sit at the piano and never, never again have another boss man.”
With the addition of several new members during Sample’s time at Texas State University, the Swingsters became the Jazz Crusaders and moved from Houston to Los Angeles. Pursuing individual work while performing with the Crusaders (the group’s new, shortened name,) Sample did studio work. With the breakup of the group in 1987, Sample continued to write and record.
Today Sample takes his trio with him on tour. It includes drummer Moyes Lucas, and on the acoustic bass, his own son, Nicklas Sample, who has been playing with his dad for the last seven years.
“He said it’s time for him to start learning whatever I could offer to teach him,” Sample said. “I got him under my wing and he has grown tremendously.”
The trio will perform a few jazz standards, such as “Stormy Weather” and “These Foolish Things,” but the main show will be selections from Sample’s enormous body of original compositions dating to his first solo album, “Rainbow Seeker,” recorded in 1978.
