Joseph Leslie Joe Sample (February 1, 1939 – September 12, 2014) was an American pianist, keyboard player, and composer. He was one of the founding members of the Jazz Crusaders, the band which became simply the Crusaders in 1971, and remained a part of the group until its final album in 1991 (not including the 2003 reunion album Rural Renewal).

Beginning in the 1970s, he enjoyed a successful solo career and guested on many recordings by other performers and groups, including Miles Davis, George Benson, Jimmy Witherspoon, B. B. King, Eric Clapton, Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, and the Supremes. Sample incorporated jazz, gospel, blues, Latin, and classical forms into his music.

Sample was born in Houston, Texas on February 1, 1939. Sample began to play the piano at age 5. He was a student of the organist and pianist Curtis Mayo.

In high school in the 1950s, Sample teamed up with friends saxophonist Wilton Felder and drummer Stix Hooper to form a group called the Swingsters. While studying piano at Texas Southern University, Sample met and added trombonist Wayne Henderson and several other players to the Swingsters, which became the Modern Jazz Sextet and then the Jazz Crusaders,[1] in emulation of one of the leading progressive jazz bands of the day, Art Blakeys Jazz Messengers. Sample never took a degree from the university; instead, in 1960, he and the Jazz Crusaders made the move from Houston to Los Angeles.

The group quickly found opportunities on the West Coast, making its first recording, Freedom Sounds in 1961 and releasing up to four albums a year over much of the 1960s. The Jazz Crusaders played at first in the dominant hard bop style of the day, standing out by virtue of their unusual front-line combination of saxophone (played by Wilton Felder) and Hendersons trombone. Another distinctive quality was the funky, rhythmically appealing acoustic piano playing of Sample, who helped steer the groups sound into a fusion between jazz and soul[2] in the late 1960s. The Jazz Crusaders became a strong