Edgar Sampson
Edgar Melvin Sampson, nicknamed "The Lamb", was an American jazz composer, arranger, saxophonist, and violinist. Born in New York City, he began playing violin aged six and picked up the saxophone in high school. He worked as an arranger and composer for many jazz bands in the 1930s and 1940s. He composed two well-known jazz standards: "Stompin' at the Savoy", and "Don't Be That Way".
Life and career
Born in New York City, Sampson began his professional career in 1924 with a violin piano duo with Joe Colman. Through the rest of the 1920s and early 1930s, Sampson played with many bands, including those of Charlie "Fess" Johnson, Duke Ellington, Rex Stewart and Fletcher Henderson.In 1934, Sampson joined the Chick Webb band. It during his period with Webb that Sampson created his most enduring work as a composer, writing "Stompin' at the Savoy" and "Don't Be That Way". He left the Webb band in 1936 with a reputation as a composer and arranger that led to freelance work with Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Red Norvo, Teddy Hill, Teddy Wilson and Chick Webb.
Edgar Sampson became a student of the Schillinger System in the early 1940s. He continued to play sax through the late 1940s and started his own band. In the late 1940s through the 1950s, he worked with Latin performers such as Marcelino Guerra, Tito Rodríguez and Tito Puente as an arranger. Sampson recorded one album under his own name, Swing Softly Sweet Sampson, in 1956. Due to illness, he stopped working in the late 1960s.
His daughter, Grace Sampson, studied music and co-wrote the standard "Mambo Inn" with Mario Bauzá and Bobby Woodlen.