10 Facts About Sammy Price

Samuel Blythe Price was an American jazz, boogie-woogie and jump blues pianist and bandleader.

Sammy Price's playing is dark, mellow, and relaxed rather than percussive, and he was a specialist at creating the appropriate mood and swing for blues and rhythm and blues recordings.

Sammy Price lived and played jazz in Kansas City, Chicago and Detroit.

Sammy Price was known for his work with his own band, known as the Texas Bluesicians, that included fellow musicians Don Stovall and Emmett Berry.

Sammy Price was the accompanist on countless recording sessions for the Decca blues, race, and rhythm-and-blues catalogs, and featuring such singers as Trixie Smith, Blue Lu Barker, and Cousin Joe.

Sammy Price recorded under his own name, with gospel singers and with Lester Young, toured Europe with Jimmy Rushing, appeared at many jazz festivals, and performed in a Broadway play starring Tallulah Bankhead.

Sammy Price often appeared on a program with Art Tatum.

Later, in the 1970s, Sammy Price played at Barney Josephson's restaurant, the Cookery.

Later in his life, Sammy Price partnered with the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, and was the headline entertainment at the Crawdaddy Restaurant, a New Orleans themed restaurant in New York in the mid-1970s.

Sammy Price died of a heart attack in April 1992, at home in Harlem, in New York City, at the age of 83.