Beautifully played & produced with an excellent song selection, there is no reason for any R&B/jazz lover not to have this in their collection. Both Sample and David T. Walker are hot, and have a great rappore. The horn section absolutely kicks. The only bad thing about this album is it ends to soon and leaves you hungry for more.
Joe Sample returns to the smooth jazz style of his popular albums Rainbow Seeker, Carmel, and Voices in the Rain on 1983's The Hunter. The keyboardist fills up a studio with like-minded session musicians including trumpeter Tom Browne, horn players Chuck Findley, Jerry Hey, and Ernie Watts, guitarists Dean Parks, David Spinozza, and Phil Upchurch, bassists Abraham Laboriel and Marcus Miller, percussionist Paulinho Da Costa, and drummer Steve Gadd, and sets them loose on some rhythmic tracks with a rock/R&B feel.
In case anyone has forgotten how ingratiating and prolific Joe Sample the songwriter has been, the master of elegant funk re-records 14 songs here. And it is a cooler, more reflective light in which Sample and producer George Duke see his old tunes in the '90s: with relaxed, uncomplicated, to-the-point acoustic piano leads; a mildly percolating beat; and a veneer-thin garnish of electronics.
With the supremely funky rhythm section of Marcus Miller (bass), Lenny Castro (percussion) and Omar Hakim (drums) propelling his piano most of the way – the other ringers on a few tracks aren't bad either – you would think that Joe Sample couldn't miss on this solo outing, Spellbound. Indeed, his distinctive piano cannot be mistaken for anyone else's, free of the usual mainstream influences and always a pleasure to groove to. And yet there is something too comfortable, too settled, too automatic about the musicmaking here, as if the grooves are being smothered by a warm, snuggly electric blanket.
Pianist Joe Sample, who has had easily the most successful solo career of any of the Crusaders, recorded a series of melodic and lightly funky sets for MCA . Sample is joined by Dean Parks, Carlos Fearing, David T. Walker and/or Barry Finnerty on guitars, either Wilton Felder, Abraham Laboriel or Nathan East on bass, drummer Ndugu, percussionist Paulinho Da Costa and occasional synthesizers and strings.
Joe Sample is the golden boy of American fusion-jazz, but his recent project Children of the Sun is not as sunny as the title might imply. Stimulated by a visit to the Caribbean island of St. Croix, he started to look particularly into the subject of slavery – a part of his own family history. Sample has been planning this project since 1995, and will bring his composition to the Berlin audience with the NDR Bigband (the Hamburg Radio Big Band), arranged by Jorg Achim Keller.
Sample's Ashes to Ashes was released in 1990, but, here it is a century later, and the music has remained ageless. Masterfully creative and skillfully played, Sample has a secret love affair with the piano, and each cut on this CD is like a page out of his diary. Every time you play this CD you will hear something different, and when you're not listening to it, you'll hear his piano in your head.