OBIT: Joe Sample, Iconic Jazz Keyboard Artist/Composer

Originally posted at 1:23 p.m. Sept. 13, 2014. Edited with new details.

Joe Sample, an iconic jazz and keyboard artist and composer whose music transcended genres and defied easy labels, has died at age 75, his family reported today.

Sample split his time between residences in Santa Monica, Mammoth Lakes and his native Houston. His death was Friday and first reported on his Twitter feed, and then confirmed by family members.

He was a founder of two seminal Los Angeles jazz bands, the Modern Jazz Sextet and the Jazz Crusaders. In the late 1970s, the Jazz Crusaders transitioned into a blend of funk, soul and jazz, renamed itself the Crusaders and became a mainstay on smooth jazz stations like KTWV in Los Angeles and KIFM in San Diego.

Sample also recorded with B.B. King, Steely Dan and the Supremes.

No services have been announced.

Sample was survived by his wife, Yolanda, and son, Niklas, according to the Houston Chronicle.

--City News Service

PHOTO Credit: Tom Beetz, Wikimedia Commons.