Sam Brown

[neatomic]

longtime fan of obscure late 60's/early 70's jazzer- sam t brown- guitarist...

(not joe browns daughter-sam brown uk singer)


one of the few (if only) guitarists to work in keith jarretts band

turned up this shot of sam circa 1969 with nyc band-ars nova...





tracked the guitar as being a goya rangemaster

this one sold years later in nyc..(maybe sams!)...

pups are replacement dimarzios...like a thinline kessel



sam passed away very early on...under mysterious and tragic circumstances

one of drummer paul motians fave players..and he knew guitarists!

cheers

[neatomic]

sam was more famously known as a tele user...few pics exist


and this from back of lp cover



cheers

[neatomic]

his eclectic discography-

With Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong and His Friends (Flying Dutchman/Amsterdam, 1970)

With Carla Bley
Escalator over the Hill (JCOA 1971)

With Gary Burton
Good Vibes (Atlantic, 1969)
Gary Burton & Keith Jarrett (Atlantic, 1970)
Live in Tokyo (Atlantic, 1971)

With Ron Carter
Uptown Conversation (Embryo, 1970)
Blues Farm (CTI, 1973)

With Richard Davis
The Philosophy of the Spiritual (Cobblestone, 1971)

With Paul Desmond
Bridge over Troubled Water: Paul Desmond plays the songs of Simon and Garfunkel (CTI, 1970)

With the Bill Evans-George Russell Orchestra
Living Time (Columbia, 1972)

With Astrud Gilberto
Gilberto with Turrentine with Stanley Turrentine (CTI, 1971)

With Gene Harris
Gene Harris of the Three Sounds (Blue Note, 1972)

With Keith Jarrett
Expectations (Columbia, 1971)
Treasure Island (1974)

With Hubert Laws
Flute By-Laws (Atlantic, 1966)
Laws' Cause (Atlantic, 1968)

With Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band
Central Park North (1969)

With the Liberation Music Orchestra
Liberation Music Orchestra (1969)

With Mike Mainieri
Journey Thru an Electric Tube (Solid State, 1968)

With Herbie Mann
First Light (Atlantic, 1974)
Surprises (Atlantic, 1976)
Gagaku & Beyond (Finnadar/Atlantic, 1974 [1976])

With Dave Matthews Big Band
Night Flight (1977)
Live at the Five Spot (1975)

With Gary McFarland
Profiles (Impulse!, 1966)
Simpático with Gábor Szabó (Impulse!, 1966)

With Blue Mitchell
Many Shades of Blue (Mainstream, 1974)

With Paul Motian
Conception Vessel (ECM, 1971)
Tribute (ECM, 1974)

With Mark Murphy
Bridging a Gap (Muse, 1972)

With Duke Pearson
The Phantom (1968)

With Pat Rebillot
Free Fall (1974)

With Jeremy Steig
Legwork (Solid State, 1970)
Wayfaring Stranger (Blue Note, 1971)

cheers

[sgcim]

Back when I was first getting into jazz guitar seriously, I used to got to NYC to hear everybody.
I saw Sam Brown twice in one week; first with Joe Farrell, playing his Tele, really loud and using distortion on every solo, at The Bottom Line.
He didn't look like he was in good shape, and I really disliked his playing, but I stayed to hear Joe Farrell.
Every tune they played lasted for over 20 minutes, and I even got tired of JF after a while.

Then I went in to see what I thought would be Jim Hall at Kenny Burrell's club, "The Guitar", but when I got there, Sam Brown was subbing for Hall, and he played a duo with a bass player.
Again, it was largely fusion type stuff, which I wasn't into at the time. I don't remember him playing a note of what I'd call straight-ahead jazz. He used his Tele again, and had good chops, but the style of music he played wasn't my cup of tea. Fusion was very big in NY at the time.

He was a great reader, and played nylon string guitar very well, so he played on almost all of Gary McFarland's albums.
The one straight-ahead jazz album he played on was "College Jazz", led by a drummer I used to work with playing shows at a big theater in NY. I didn't hear anything special in his straight-ahead playing on that record.
He also played nylon string guitar on one of Bill Evans albums (not the Russell album).

Gary Burton has a story of him in GB's autobiography, where he's at a recording session, taking uppers or downers, according to what he thought his playing needed on the particular tune. He piled the pills up in a big stack, and then they fell down in the middle of a tune!
Burton has stories about why he got rid of Coryell and Metheny in the book, too.

[neatomic]

good stuff per usual s! thanx

sam on nylon with bill evans..evans on piano and rhodes...plus bassist

cheers

[David Dvorin]

Sam Brown is one of my faves! That certainly wasn’t always the case...I used to hate his sound on Keith Jarrett’s Expectations album: too raw, sloppy, etc. Now I crave it; his sound and feel on Take Me Back is so killer and soulful. So different from other guitarists of that period bringing soul music aesthetic to jazz that was different from the typical rock stylings. Love the tele sound!

All of his work with Jarrett is my favorite (Treasure Island, etc.) , but I also like the live album with Gary Burton’s group a great deal. Too bad he had such a limited recording output...

[Rob MacKillop]

Never heard of him, I'm afraid. Sounds very interesting on Sundance - but so does the bass player during Sam's solo, who he?

[neatomic]

your man charlie haden!

sams the guitarist on hadens liberation music orchestra

cheers

[Rob MacKillop]

Ah, then I have heard him before. Good to know I can hear good bass playing too. I thought long and hard recently about buying an upright bass, but worried the left-hand work would take its toll on fingers that have developed the lightest of touches, and the right hand pizz technique might damage my classical/lute tone, so I dropped the idea. Tis a pity, though. It might well be the one that got away. At school, the only people who could have music lessons were those whose family could afford an instrument. Mine couldn't. So one day I sneaked into the school's instrument cupboard and saw a double bass. What an incredible find! I worked out a couple of melodies, and what sounded like a scale, before I was discovered by the Head of Music, who gave me six lashes with the leather belt. Later, when I was 23, I noticed a DB in the local auction house. I persuaded my renegade friends to chip in some money, and together we raised an impressive £60 or so. It went for £80. Buying a guitar was cheaper, but my life could have been somewhat different.

Thanks for these uploads, Neatomic!

[unknownguitarplayer]

Off-Topic, but Burton's book is amazing in that he doesn't sugar-coat his musical or personal experiences with other musicians. His Stan Getz stories are brutal, but also give a very clear picture of Getz's musical strengths and limitations. He had very frank assessments of Anita O'Day and several others I can't recall.

[neatomic]

more bass then!

sam with ron carter..playing some soul..alongside herbie hancock

uptown conversation - ron carter

cheers

[Rob MacKillop]

Very nice, but maybe too nice? Sounds like music for a sitcom or easy TV drama at times. Is Ron doubling on cello?

[neatomic]

yeah very much of the era...lps opener title track...the record label (herbie manns -embryo) might have been looking for some radio play

maybe you'll like the next tune..ten string...4 of rons and 6 of sams...sam adding a little atmosphere to rons solo..a little more out there!

and yeah ron plays cello!

cheers

[grahambop]

So one day I sneaked into the school's instrument cupboard and saw a double bass. What an incredible find! I worked out a couple of melodies, and what sounded like a scale, before I was discovered by the Head of Music, who gave me six lashes with the leather belt.

While enduring interminable bass solos, I have sometimes wished that this kind of deterrent was meted out to bassists more often.

[Rob MacKillop]

Graham - LOL! You bad man!

Neatomic - better! Ron is always amazing, and Sam adds just enough to lift it even further. Excellent.

[Irishmuso]

sam was more famously known as a tele user...few pics exist


and this from back of lp cover



cheers

Coincidentally Como En Vietnam from the Gary Burton & Keith Jarrett album is one of my most listened to tracks at the moment - and I'm not sure why! The quasi-latin feel, quirky melody mostly, but Sam's distorted octaves very high in the mix was what really caught my ear. I transcribed it and may start to work it up in rehearsal soon. To be honest, it's his tone rather than his technique which is distinctive and I'll be interested to see if the track survives with something more conventional. I don't know a lot about him but I suspect that he wasn't terribly well served by either equipment or recording engineers at the time and had he lived on, he might have entered into Frisell-esque territory.

[mr. beaumont]

Great thread. Sam was a hell of a player...the kind of guy you maybe didn't notice til you realized he was on 5 of your favorite records.

[unknownguitarplayer]

I saw Sam Brown in NYC in the early 70s with Gary Burton, and then spent several days with him a few years later, circa 1974. I met him through Wayne Wright, who was playing with Buddy Rich at the time. Wayne and Sam were both super-nice and encouraging to an extremely green young player (Sam offered me a place to stay). They talked about the chain of Detroit guitar players in NY (Sam wasn't from Detroit, but had moved there and eventually left for NY). The story they told was that Kenny Burrell was first, and his steady gig was playing in the pit for "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying". When Wayne came to NY, he took over for Kenny, and then Sam took over for Wayne. They talked about 2 jazz guitar players who stayed in Detroit: One was Marty Kallao (you've never heard of him but he was a monster in his day), the other was Joe Messina. The told me that Joe had stopped playing the guitar after Motown left Detroit in 72. I didn't know Joe at the time, but I met him a few years later (that's a whole other story). I spoke with Joe yesterday and asked him about Sam. He remembered getting together with Sam, Wayne Wright and another guitar player (whose name he couldn't remember) several times to jam. He said Sam played an archtop and was a good player, and was surprised to hear about Telecasters, classical guitars or drugs in connection with Sam.

[pcsanwald]

Any good Joe Messina stories? In the Motown documentary, it looks like he got into the car wash business?

[sgcim]

I saw Sam Brown in NYC in the early 70s with Gary Burton, and then spent several days with him a few years later, circa 1974. I met him through Wayne Wright, who was playing with Buddy Rich at the time. Wayne and Sam were both super-nice and encouraging to an extremely green young player (Sam offered me a place to stay). They talked about the chain of Detroit guitar players in NY (Sam wasn't from Detroit, but had moved there and eventually left for NY). The story they told was that Kenny Burrell was first, and his steady gig was playing in the pit for "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying". When Wayne came to NY, he took over for Kenny, and then Sam took over for Wayne. They talked about 2 jazz guitar players who stayed in Detroit: One was Marty Kallao (you've never heard of him but he was a monster in his day), the other was Joe Messina. The told me that Joe had stopped playing the guitar after Motown left Detroit in 72. I didn't know Joe at the time, but I met him a few years later (that's a whole other story). I spoke with Joe yesterday and asked him about Sam. He remembered getting together with Sam, Wayne Wright and another guitar player (whose name he couldn't remember) several times to jam. He said Sam played an archtop and was a good player, and was surprised to hear about Telecasters, classical guitars or drugs in connection with Sam.

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.

[jbernstein91]

I really like Sam Brown's playing on Jarrett's "Treasure Island," and the tune itself - kind of Steely Dan-ish (or maybe it was the other way around).

[henryrobinett]

I never got Sam Brown's playing.

[Mikey149]

I remember Sam Brown from my days as a Broadway musician. Myself and another guitarist filled the guitar chairs in the Broadway show "Pippin" in the mid to late 70's. Whenever we had a conflict with a record or jingle date we'd call in a sub to do the show. One night Sam was called in without prior rehearsal, mainly because he was known to be such a good sight reader. I remember like it was yesterday, the band had all entered the pit and since the guitar chairs were at the entrance, we were last to go in. I turned around and saw Sam, vertical bottle in hand, urging him to hurry before me since I had to be last in. The first couple of charts went well, and I could see his genius command of the printed page at work. But halfway into the three hour show it fell apart. The conductor motioned for him to stop playing more than once. We were told to not have him sub again after that. A few months later, word was that he committed suicide. Another tragic end to a gifted musician.

[unknownguitarplayer]

Sad story, but thanks for sharing it.

[sgcim]

I remember Sam Brown from my days as a Broadway musician. Myself and another guitarist filled the guitar chairs in the Broadway show "Pippin" in the mid to late 70's. Whenever we had a conflict with a record or jingle date we'd call in a sub to do the show. One night Sam was called in without prior rehearsal, mainly because he was known to be such a good sight reader. I remember like it was yesterday, the band had all entered the pit and since the guitar chairs were at the entrance, we were last to go in. I turned around and saw Sam, vertical bottle in hand, urging him to hurry before me since I had to be last in. The first couple of charts went well, and I could see his genius command of the printed page at work. But halfway into the three hour show it fell apart. The conductor motioned for him to stop playing more than once. We were told to not have him sub again after that. A few months later, word was that he committed suicide. Another tragic end to a gifted musician.

Wow, I used to do some work for the contractor of that show, Mel R., who called me for the road tour of the show back then. I worked for years with one of the keyboard players of that show, Mike Alterman, was he still doing the show when you did it?