The Music News Thread

[Blooby]

Joe Sample, keyboard player, bandleader and composer, was born on February 1, 1939. He died of cancer on September 12, 2014, aged 75.

Although Joe Sample was best known in jazz circles as the leader of the Crusaders, a seminal jazz-rock crossover band, his prolific output as a session pianist, producer and composer took him into almost every branch of 20th-century popular music.

His playing was heard on albums by artists as diverse as Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell and Rod Stewart, but his range was so broad that he was equally at home with the blues of BB King, the country music of Hoyt Axton and the rock of Steely Dan.

As a composer, he not only wrote successful songs for Randy Crawford, but he was to see his work sampled by hip-hoppers such as Tupac Shakur, and also featured on film soundtracks, notably Nicole Kidman’s version of One Day I’ll Fly Away in Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge.

Off stage, Sample was softly spoken to the point of being inaudible. A kind, gentle and sincere man, he was quick to laugh and full of stories about music. He was never happier than when Claude Nobs (obituary, January 12, 2013), founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival, asked him to host late night jam sessions, where he would play material by everyone from Jelly Roll Morton to Herbie Hancock.

Joseph Leslie Sample was born in 1939 and grew up in Houston, Texas. His parents had a Creole background, and hailed from Georgia and Louisiana. Their home was full of the succulent smells of Creole cuisine, and the sound of what was then known as “La la”, but is now called Zydeco — the accordion-heavy, French-accented swamp music of east Texas and Louisiana. As a child, Sample was taken to hear the greatest accordionist in the style, Clifton Chenier. “I never forgot that music,” he recalled in an interview when he formed his Creole Joe band last year. For their tour he taught himself the accordion and played alongside his son Nicklas, the band’s bassist.

At Wheatley High School in Houston in the mid-1950s, Sample formed his first band, the Modern Jazz Sextet. With the flautist Hubert Laws, plus Wilton Felder (saxophone), Stix Hooper (drums), and Wayne Henderson (trombone), this group eventually became the Jazz Crusaders. After studying music at Texas Southern University, Sample took them to Los Angeles in 1958, beginning a 30-year professional career with the band. From early acoustic albums playing hard bop in the style of Art Blakey, the band added organ and electric piano [and Larry Carlton], dropped the word “Jazz” from its title, and became a highly influential force in fusion music. “We were mostly rebels, and when everyone was going in one direction, we deliberately went the other way,” said Sample.

The band achieved hit records with such songs as Street Life. This piece was inspired, according to Sample, by a skiing holiday on which he witnessed chaos on the nursery slopes at Mammoth Mountain. “I saw people falling, running into each other, and it looked like a boulevard of madness. I said to myself, that’s what Street Life is.”

By contrast, the band achieved a level of notoriety when its song Way Back Home was heard in the background of the Symbionese Liberation Army’s taped ransom demands for the return of the press heiress Patty Hearst. “The FBI contacted us and asked what our connection was to these people,” he recalled. “I had no idea what they were talking about.” The band also played in Zaire in 1974 at a festival celebrating Muhammad Ali’s “Rumble in the Jungle” with heavyweight boxer George Foreman. They later became the first instrumental band to open for the Rolling Stones on a national US tour.

Sample left the Crusaders in 1987, though they were to be reunited on record in 2003. By the time they performed together again in concert — in 2011 — Sample had recovered from the second of two heart attacks. “We were all at that age where any one of us could possibly go,” he said at the time, “I felt like we’d gone back to the mid-60s, and it was a wonderful feeling.” Eric Clapton was a guest on the band’s reunion album.

His solo career had begun while he was still with the Crusaders, working with Diana Ross, and then touring with Tom Scott’s LA Express as Joni Mitchell’s backing band. He worked in the studios in Nashville with many of the great names in soul music. “People loved working with him,” recalled the guitarist Ray Parker Jr, “because he was so good at getting the rhythm together”. Sample always credited his Creole heritage for this, saying “I used to wonder why musicians from Nashville couldn’t swing, but musicians from Texas could. It’s in my genes”.

Having lived in California for years, Sample and his wife Yolanda — who survives him together with his son — moved back to Houston in 1999. Their home in Clear Lake became celebrated for Creole music and food. “The neighbours used to think I was hosting poker parties,” he said, “but I’d tell them, ‘No! That’s cooking’. ”

Even in ill health, Sample’s playing was undimmed. He performed on Willie Nelson’s album American Classic, by which time he was also an accomplished producer, making albums with Bobby Womack and Bill Withers. He collaborated once again with Crawford for his last album, Live, released in 2012.

(The - London - Times)

[Blooby]

State of U.S. music sales article that might be of interest to some of you.

Blooby


The latest U.S. music industry check-up shows vinyl album sales continue to be modest but vibrant, while revenues for the business overall remain in flagging health. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, vinyl sales were up 43 percent by value for the first six months of 2014, to what The New York Times reports as $146 million. That's just a tiny drop in the ocean, though, for an industry where overall revenues of $3.2 billion were down almost 5 percent from the same period last year.

Growth in streaming services countered a decline in download sales, so the total value of digital formats was about flat at $2.2 billion, according to the RIAA. Digital downloads fell 12 percent by revenue to $1.3 billion, with 54.3 million digital albums sold, compared with 61.3 million in the first half of last year. Streaming music services were up 28 percent, though, to $859 million. Within this category, paid subscriptions jumped 23 percent to $371 million. It's all just another sign that streaming may soon overtake digital sales of music, at least among U.S. listeners — and another factor in the fight over digital radio royalties.

All physical formats combined made up just 21 percent of the revenue pie, compared with 41 percent for downloads and 27 percent for streaming. That's mainly CDs: The shiny discs represents 80 percent of physical shipments. According to the Times, though, the value of CD sales tumbled 19 percent to $716 million. Out of all U.S. music revenues (digital and physical), vinyl accounted for almost 5 percent.

The numbers from the RIAA, the U.S. music industry trade group, flesh out what we previously learned from Nielsen SoundScan's mid-year report. According to SoundScan, the number of albums sold overall in the United States this year through June 29 fell 15 percent compared with the same period last year. Vinyl albums sold 40 percent more copies, though, while on-demand streaming rose 42 percent. Leading the mid-year albums charts, meanwhile, were the Frozen soundtrack, Beyoncé's self-titled album and Eric Church's The Outsiders. Among vinyl albums, Jack White's Lazaretto is the runaway leader of the pack.

For those about to celebrate Cassette Store Day this weekend, we salute you, but the RIAA's latest report didn't include tape revenues, which are no doubt still pretty miniscule at this point. And while Urban Outfitters has yet to respond to requests for further details about an executive's statement to analysts that it's the world's biggest vinyl music seller, the RIAA's numbers don't shed any more light there, either — they're not broken out by retailer.

[ODH]

Bill Nelson honoured in home town

[T.C. Elliott]

Local news, I guess. But a legend in these parts has passed. R.I.P. Lou

http://entertainment.suntimes.com/entertainment-news/lou-whitney-elder-statesman-midwest-rock-many-dies/

[Oldrottenhead]

just watched the nick cave movie 20, 000 days on earth. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2920540/

wow! a must see for anyone interested in songwriting, music and the human experience. moving stuff.

[Blooby]

Percy Sledge apparently died at 73. Will have to spin "When a Man Loves a Woman" at some point today.

[Speed Demon]

I did my part for the music industry. I bought a used music CD at a yard sale for 25 cents.

[Flash Harry]

Bill Nelson honoured in home town

Missed this - I was a big Bill Nelson fan back in the day - I still visit Furniture Music from time to time. What a shite event Wakefield put on for him though. That was shocking - I had a better reception at the Hop there last Friday Night with the Sinners.

[Oldrottenhead]

I met bill nelson years ago during his red noise period. Just back from a long weekend in Blairgowrie and I had Red Noise cd added to piepod for the journey.

[Blooby]

Ornette Coleman just passed away. I know most people lump all his stuff in the crazy free jazz category (and that is certainly what he was known for), but there was a beauty in his playing I think a lot of people overlook.

He was 85 I believe.

Blooby