Joe Sample

For more than four decades, pianist and composer Joe Sample has been an integral, innovative and bestselling part of jazz history. With Soul Shadows, the first all solo piano recording of Sample's illustrious career, he pays homage to the great American songwriters of the 20th century whose masterful works inspired his own development as one of the most diverse and popular jazz performers of the last half century.
A founding member of the influential jazz funk combo The Crusaders (originally the… Show more Jazz Crusaders) and a pioneer of contemporary jazz piano, Sample reaches back to the primary sources of jazz and soul music to create his personal interpretations of classics by such esteemed composers as Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, the Gershwins, Al Jolson, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and others. While exploring these rich expressions of Americana, Sample acknowledges his own key role in carrying on these powerful legacies by including distinct reworkings of two of his own classics, "Soul Shadows" (which originally appeared on The Crusaders' Midnight Triangle in 1976) and "Spellbound."

Show less