Sammy Price playing some blues for a college audience, 1987:
Here is the epigraph for Setting a Tone:
"Pete Johnson and Sam Price are mere perfection when they play the blues. Nobody can touch them. To play real blues you must have that certain something, well, call it some sort of feeling. Many don't have that. But Pete and Sam really got it. That's why I say they are as great on the blues as Tatum is in jazz."
--Oran Hot Lips Page
Sammy Price and Art Tatum often appeared on the same bill at Cafe Society, the rhythmically imaginative boogie-woogie and blues man paired with the greatest of jazz pianists. Sammy would sit with Tatum, who was blind, at the piano before his set and point out the celebrities in the audience.
Sammy’s most cherished photograph was taken at Cafe Society, with Sammy seated at the piano and Tatum standing to his right side, and the veteran Cafe Society pianist Teddy Wilson to his left. The photo appeared on the cover of an album of Sammy Price’s early recordings, released by Dan Kochakian on his “Whiskey, Women, and…” Records in 1985.
“Art Tatum was my inspiration,” he wrote in his autobiography, What Do They Want. “I could never play like Art, and I don’t even sound like him, but the ideas that he had was what I like to hear. He was just so amazing. From then on we became very, very close.”
Tatum told Sammy that his style was primitive but that he had good tone. Sammy had thought deeply about tone, and what it meant for his identity as a pianist. He talked about tone frequently during our lessons. I had not thought at all about tone in the way he did.
In this audio clip from our first lesson, he mentions tone for the first time. Sammy had played a beautiful slow blues, and then told me to play. The clip begins with the last part of my slow blues. Honest commentary follows, and he conveys what a fine teacher he will be.
I will publish a final Preview #3 next Friday with a look at boogie-woogie.
Epigraph: The Sammy Price Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Archives division.
Pass the street?