Still Crusading
Cover Story
Still Crusading
Even after more than 50 years as a jazz pianist, Joe Sample of Local 47 (Los Angeles) doesn’t see his best days as behind him. He still tours with The Crusaders, a reincarnation of the group he founded in Houston, which became a mainstay of the international jazz scene, and he says that their music is still "so on the money."
Sample and saxophonist Wilton Felder of Local 47 are the only two original members of The Crusaders in the current line-up, but they give the group its musical legacy. The Crusaders, originally The Jazz Crusaders, were a pioneering group in the hard-bop vein of American jazz, and as they made the transition to a music more influenced by R&B and funk, they brought an electrified and electrifying approach to the genre.
The Same Feeling
In mid-March, Sample and the reconstituted Crusaders lineup went on a tour of Asia, including two days at the Jakarta International Jazz Festival in Indonesia. After the tour, Sample marveled at the vibrancy of the international jazz scene, saying, "Who would have thought, 20 or 30 years ago, that Jakarta would be a meeting place?" He also took note of the variety in the musical line-up at the festival. "There was soul and blues, the Gipsy Kings were there, there were local musicians from Indonesia," he says.
A similar mixture took place in The Crusaders’ sound during the late 1960s, as the group removed the "Jazz" from its name and embraced the variety of sounds at the heart of the genre--R&B, soul, gospel, and funk .
The Asian tour filled Sample with joy and fulfillment, as the group conjured up the previous group’s sound. "Over there, I felt like I was on a time machine," he says. "It was so awesome--I felt like I was in the ’70s. We were playing music from 1968 to 1982, and it felt like going back. You can feel it almost exactly the same."
Along with Felder, The Crusaders line-up that performed in Japan and Indonesia features Sample’s son, Nicklas, also of Local 47, on bass. Sample says, partly joking, that it’s great to have a bassist "who will allow me to tell him how the music should be played."
Also in the mix is Ray Parker, Jr. of Locals 5 (Detroit, MI) and 47, on guitar. The Crusaders added a guitarist when they made the shift toward R&B and soul, and Parker continues that tradition. "Ray adds a tremendous amount, an ingredient to the rhythm of the music," Sample says. I need more of a rhythm player than a great fusion soloist, and he understands the rhythmic concept of the band."
Steve Gadd of Local 802 (New York City) on drums completes the rhythm section; Sample identifies Gadd as one of only a few players in the younger generation with whom he truly gels.
At a Junction in Jazz
The Crusaders formed in Houston, Sample’s hometown and the city where he still makes his home. The group began in the 1950s as The Swingsters, with Sample, Felder, and drummer Nesbert "Stix" Hooper of Local 47. They later added trombonist Wayne Henderson to the mix, with the bass player spot continually changing. They moved to Los Angeles in 1960 and then became The Jazz Crusaders.
The group was thrust into the mainstream at a critical time in jazz history, when free jazz and more radical forms of improvisation were taking hold. "In ’63, jazz was making a complete overhaul," Sample recalls. "It was changing and going into free jazz. I saw some of those forms in New York--and I describe it as music made by the slide rule--preprescribed. What bothered me was that it leaves no space, not a millisecond of space. There’s these endless cascades of sixteenth notes and thirty-second notes."
Sample’s ideal for the genre includes dynamic contrast and a sense of space between the notes and rhythms. He doesn’t hold this ideology up as a model of purity or perfection; he only knows that it is what has served him so far.
"The values I grew up with are those that made me become a musician, and I’m still working on those values," he says.
Having made many studio recordings and played countless live concerts and festivals, Sample finds it hard to pick one over the other. "I love them both," he says. "With three or four or five guys, the most magical thing is to sit there when it happens--when everybody is feeling the exact same thing at the exact same time. That is what I look for, in a studio recording or live."
Keyboard Blues
In both performing and recording, every piano player will encounter an out-of-tune instrument, and Sample is more frank than most about his experiences. "The worst life a musician can have is to be a piano player," he says. It might seem like a joke, but he goes on, "There were times I felt envious of the horn players, because they had their instruments! As a piano player, 98% of the instruments--they are dogs! I remember we were in Cleveland in a so-called jazz club, and there was a piano: it had 88 keys, but only three keys on the piano played!" Sample pulled a Hammond organ onto the stage and played that instead.
With The Crusaders and later as a solo artist, Sample delved more deeply into electric keyboard, exploring the Fender Rhodes and Hammond organ sound and forging a sound that acknowledged the roots of jazz in gospel and soul.
He hasn’t given up on the acoustic grand, though. "I use the full range of what the piano has to offer, and I try to get out of it what the piano has to give," he says, adding, "It’s like a race car: you’ve got to keep it in very fine condition." But having reconfigured his playing mid-career, Sample had to adapt to new playing conditions. "I knew I couldn’t play it the same way, but the electric offers very meaningful things," he says. "Suddenly, voicings on the Rhodes will sing out. I welcomed the difference, and discovering [the Rhodes] was like getting study in orchestration. Certain things just sing and ring out."
Back to His Roots
Houston may be a large city, but it doesn’t have the kind of influence in the music world that New York City or Los Angeles have. Still, Sample also owes his individual sound to the Creole influence in south Texas and his love of music to the variety of sounds he encountered there.
"The jukebox is the greatest university of music that has ever existed," he says. He still recalls calling out requests to waitresses at restaurants in Houston, asking them to put on records by Chet Baker and Stan Kenton--though he knew them as D-1, F-4, and so on.
His Texas roots also put him contact with the late tenor saxophonist Curtis Amy, another Houston native who would later connect him with Pacific Jazz Records. His work for Pacific Jazz brought him into the AFM in Los Angeles. "When I grew up it was vital to join the union, and it helped to get work," he says. "I hear so many musicians complain that we always had to create our own work, but the union made it possible for me to collect a pension and to organize my life."
Though Sample now makes his home in Houston, he still returns to Los Angeles for studio work. "I still use the rehearsal facilities at Local 47," he adds. "It’s a wonderful place." His membership was especially important as he became established as a studio musician in Los Angeles. "I know the union made it possible that we were paid fairly," he says.
Even though he continues to tour with The Crusaders, Sample has reduced his load of musical commitments, and he’s more sensitive now to the impact of sound and space. "If I’m in a loud room with people talking or where there’s a lot of commotion, I will feel myself become weak," he says. "I would prefer to sit on a mountain and listen to the wind."
It’s not all rest and repose for him, but after 50 years in music, he’s earned the time to relax. Jazz may have changed in 1960s and several times more since then, but his dedication to the genre has never waned.
