Sam Reed
The JMood Records Family is saddened by the loss of Sam Reed.
Sam Reed worked with us in Kansas City, Missouri on the 2013 Roberto Magris studio recording of “Ready For Reed”. I first became acquainted with Sam Reed after my association and conversations with Albert “Tootie” Heath of the famous musical family of Heath Brothers. Tootie Heath worked with us on two projects. Morgan Rewind: A Tribute to Lee Morgan volume 1 and One Night In With Hope and More volume 1.
Initially, my conversations with Tootie Heath centered around his contemporary, neighborhood musician and Philadelphia great Lee Morgan. As I was interviewing Tootie Heath, he mentioned several legendary Philadelphians, several who had attended the prestigious Mastbaum Vocational and Technical School he missed out on, Lee Morgan being one of them and Sam Reed to mention a few.
As I replayed the interview repeatedly several names stood out but, one caught my attention, Sam Reed simply because Tootie Heath referred to him as a childhood friend who he kept in touch with person, and over the phone. To me, for Tootie Heath to love you, there had to be some substance there.
So, off I went exploring this Sam Reed. His musical history was impressive! However, there was one problem. Sam Reed did not have a website or contact information that I could find via the Internet.
More research, more time goes by and nothing. Then, I came across an article written by a Philadelphia journalist, who had an email address listed in the article!
I fired off an email to this journalist, and sure enough, he knew exactly how to get a hold of Sam Reed. Excited with this discovery, I reached out to Sam Reed to get a feel for his response to recording with my young jazz label, JMood Records and Roberto Magris.
He was quite pleased and flattered by the offer to record with our trio featuring him but told me he was suffering from some respiratory challenges and was not sure he could do a whole album. I encouraged him to at least give us a try, that, we could take our time, and maybe not put so much pressure on him.
In the meantime, I began looking for a supporting cast of young fresh horn players that would work, and do well working alongside Sam Reed, as I knew he had much experience working with an orchestra, and other musicians as a band leader, and musical director.
Those jobs went to the now Dr. Kendall Moore, on trombone from Chicago, Illinois and Steve Lambert, tenor and clarinet player from Kansas City, Missouri.
Roberto Magris was tasked with creating the playlist, and program for recording, the date was set, studio time booked, airplane ticket bought with lodging.
Roberto Magris arranged a beautiful program which spread the work out to Sam Reed, and the “young lions” assembled for the project.
Worked out perfect!!!
Right after the recording, I hurried to ask Sam Reed for permission to interview him for our now famous “audio notebook” ™
He was winded, I was winded, and very nervous, but had prepared a few questions to ask while the unit was in the studio recording. I will include this interview at the end of this document.
Sam Reed was a very gracious, kind, calm, sincere human. He found good to say about all the musicians he spoke about even when I pushed him to elaborate about James Brown and other marquee acts. In fact, we were having such a good time talking, I was getting signals from the control room to “cut” the interview short, because we were running out of time and everyone was tired after the recording, yet Roberto, and I, and the engineer still had work to do in the control room mixing what we had recorded and cleaning up the loose ends of the interview.
Long story short, I am so happy that I was persistent in finding this legend and jewel of a man, and musician, so, humble, and mild mannered. I have learned a lot from him just in the few years we spend as friends.
Rest up my friend…we will have plenty of time for making more great music!