Sam Brown

[KRosser]

Sam was supposed to be a great bop player, but found a lot of work as a studio/jazz-rock player because he could read. In addition to the uppers and downers he used in that story from Gary Burton's autobiography, he went on to heroin.
There was a story that he was killed in a robbery in his apt. in NYC, but he actually moved back to St. Louis, and committed suicide at the age of 38 in 1977.
I remember they had an article about him in GP magazine, and a woman who was his manager, blamed his doctors who treated him with the anti-depressants (tricyclics) that they used back then, to get him off heroin, which both Nick Drake and Dinah Washington Od'd on. I don't know how Brown killed himself.

For a while I worked with a player who was Sam's roommate in NYC at the end. He told me a lot about Sam's final years and the details of his suicide. Absolutely tragic and horrific.

I always loved his playing.

[sgcim]

For a while I worked with a player who was Sam's roommate in NYC at the end. He told me a lot about Sam's final years and the details of his suicide. Absolutely tragic and horrific.

I always loved his playing.

It's been about four years since I posted that post about Sam Brown, and since then I've gotten to know a guitarist who was on the scene in NYC back then who told me about SB's suicide, and horrific is the only way you can describe something like that.