Artist: Joe Sample

Joe Sample was an American jazz keyboardist and composer.

He was one of the founding members of The Jazz Crusaders in 1960, the band which shortened its name to "The Crusaders" in 1971. He remained a part of the group until its final album in 1991 and the 2003 reunion album Rural Renewal. 

Beginning in the late 1960s, he enjoyed a successful solo career and guested on many recordings by other performers and groups, including Miles Davis,  George Benson, Jimmy Witherspoon, Michael Franks, B. B. King, Eric Clapton, Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Anita Baker, and the Supremes. Sample incorporated gospel, blues, jazz,  latin, and classical  forms into his music. 

Sample teamed up with friend's saxophonist Wilton Felder and drummer "Stix" Hooper  to form a group called the Swingsters. While studying piano at Texas Southern University, Sample met and added trombonist Wayne Henderson and several other players to the Swingsters, which became the Modern Jazz Sextet and then the Jazz Crusaders, in emulation of one of the leading progressive jazz bands of the day, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.

The group quickly found opportunities on the West Coast, making its first recording,  Freedom Sound, in 1961 and releasing up to four albums a year over much of the 1960s. The Jazz Crusaders played at first in the dominant hard bop style of the day, standing out by virtue of their unusual front-line combination of saxophone (played by Wilton Felder) and Henderson's trombone. Another distinctive quality was the funky, rhythmically appealing acoustic piano playing of Sample, who helped steer the group's sound into a fusion between jazz and soul in the late 1960s.

Sample also became a Los Angeles studio musician, appearing on recordings by Joni Mitchell, Marvin Gaye, Tina Turner, B. B. King, Joe Cocker, Minnie Riperton, Anita Baker and The Supremes.

The electric keyboard was new in the 1960s, and Sample became one of the instrument's pioneers. He began to use the electric piano while the group retained their original name, and the group hit a commercial high-water mark with the hit single "Street Life" and the album of the same name in 1979. In 1978, he recorded Swing Street Café with guitarist David T. Walker.