Sample dispenses with the need for drums and bass by drawing on such older piano styles as ragtime, stride and boogie woogie - in which the left hand performs the rhythm section functions while the right plays and embellishes the melody - on many of the tunes such as Scott Joplin’s syncopated rag “The Entertainer” and Jelly Roll Morton’s hot “Shreveport Stomp.” Sample puts a more contemporary stamp on some of the standards - for example taking Fats Waller’s happy-go-lucky “Ain’t Misbehavin”’ and reinterpreting it in a more pensive, bluesy style.
The CD opens with a rumbling version of a song he learned from his father, a World War I veteran - “How You Gonna Keep ’Em Down on the Farm?” - which was performed by the African-American military bandleader James Reese Europe, who is widely credited with introducing jazz to Europe in 1918-19.
Sample began his professional career playing acoustic piano in hard-bop groups in the ’50s, but here he looks even further back into pre-jazz and early jazz styles. On his first-ever acoustic solo piano recording, the 65-year-old Sample returns not only to his own roots playing piano in the living room of his mother’s Houston home, but also to the roots of jazz itself.
If you thought you knew Joe Sample through his work playing electric keyboards in the contemporary soul/funk jazz ensemble the Crusaders, you are in for a big surprise here.
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