Sammy Price and his Bluesicians, 1944

Sammy Price was similar to Lonnie Johnson in that he really defied genre classification. My friend Les, who is a trad jazz player, would describe him as a blues pianist who was at home playing jazz as well. The problem with that is he predates the introduction of the piano into Blues. Sammy is a swing and stride era pianist who continued to play effectively in the bop eras but had a special affinity for blues and boogie woogie (styles in which he is considered to be more influential). If you remember the Lucky Thompson series from a year or 2 back, Lucky played with Sammy in the mid 40's too.

These recordings were done for World Broadcasting Systems in 1944 on 16" transcriptions for broadcast purposes only. The final versions first saw public release in 1984 for 2 or 3 seconds. This is the first and only release of the entire session, warts and all. The band is astounding; Ike Quebec, Bill Coleman, Joe Eldridge (Roy's older brother), and a very young Oscar Pettiford.....WHEW!

This release produced just down the block!