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Stories   >   Samara Joy set for 'The Factory,' in 'A Joyful Holiday' featuring the McLendon Family / St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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Samara Joy set for 'The Factory,' in 'A Joyful Holiday' featuring the McLendon Family / St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Posted: December 6, 2023

St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Daniel Durchholz writes…..You could say that Samara Joy has had a pretty, pretty, pretty good year. | It started with the Grammy Awards back in February. She was nominated in two categories – Best Jazz Vocal Album, for her 2022 release “Linger Awhile” and Best New Artist, the latter category loaded with higher-profile newcomers including Olivia Rodrigo, Japanese Breakfast, Finneas and Saweetie.

She won them both.

“It was an adventure,” Joy says of her Grammy experience. “I found out about the nominations two months after I released the album, just as I was going through all the promotion and interviews and stuff; I was just focused on that.

“So to see that other people had taken note and enjoyed the project, it was really a surprise to me. And even more of a surprise to win. Ever since then…well, it kicked things up a notch.”

When Joy performed in St. Louis last May, she did a five-night stand at the Ferring Jazz Bistro. When she returns on Tuesday, she’ll play a single show, but in a much – much – bigger room: the Factory in Chesterfield.

It’s been like that everywhere she goes on her current tour, which is titled after her recently released EP, “A Joyful Holiday.”

“It’s great, you know?” she says. “It’s teaching me how to take the kind of intimacy that only a small room could bring and translate that experience to a larger room. I’m enjoying bringing a larger group into those kinds of rooms, just to fill them up with sound.”

The larger group performing with her on this tour includes her own family: her uncle, Laurone McLendon; cousins Tiera Lovell Rowe and Alana Alexander; and her father, singer/songwriter/producer Antonio McLendon, who has worked with James Ingram, Donna Summer, Gladys Knight, Andraé Crouch and others. Samara Joy is a McLendon, too, but goes by only her first and middle names. On the day of the interview, she and her father were in Washington, D.C., to sing “The Christmas Song” at the lighting of the National Christmas Tree. (The program will be broadcast on CBS on Dec. 15 at 7 p.m. CT.)

Family is one of Joy’s reasons for recording the Christmas EP. Her dad, uncle and cousins sing on it, as does her 93-year-old grandfather Elder Goldwire McClendon. “On this EP, I feel like it’s a healthy balance between the influence that jazz has had on my life, as well as the influence that my family has had on me,” she says.

When Joy started singing, though, she wasn’t much interested in jazz. But a teacher suggested she try it, and it clicked. “I knew I wanted to sing,” she says. “I figured it’d be the perfect opportunity to learn how to use my voice in a different way.”

She attended Fordham High School for the Arts and the jazz studies program at SUNY Purchase. Continuing to keep friends as well as family involved, Joy sometimes includes her college classmates and teachers in her projects and performances. Her former professors, guitarist Pasquale Grasso and drummer Kenny Washington, are among the band members on “Linger Awhile.”

Being young – she’s 24 – and having so much jazz history precede her, you’d think that it sometimes must feel like a crushing burden to try and absorb it all.

But Joy doesn’t see it that way.

“There’s so much to explore,” she says. “When I was getting into jazz, I really had no idea where to start. But college gave me the opportunity to listen to my professors, listen to my peers. If a friend of mine was listening to Billie Holiday, then I would go online and be like, “Oh my gosh, who played with Billie Holiday?” OK, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Roy Eldridge. And then I’d listen to them and all the other singers and musicians they played with. It was like a domino effect.”

Joy won the 2019 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition and recorded her self-titled debut album while still in college. From there, she gained a considerable following by putting videos of her performances on TikTok. (She’s a Gen Zer, after all.) For “Linger Awhile,” she signed with the prestigious jazz label Verve Records. “A Joyful Holiday” is also on Verve.

So what’s next?

“I’m always in the middle of thinking about what’s coming at me,” she says. I have to remind myself to focus on the music and focus on my growth, because that’s the only way that anything will move forward.

“I’m focusing on becoming a better singer, a better composer, better artist, better lyricist and surrounding myself with musicians who are thinking ahead, too. And keeping myself grounded with family.”

She has other, more distant plans as well: maybe be part of a movie soundtrack, maybe start a jazz camp where she can pay it forward and teach young people.

“I’d love to do all those things,” she says. “But it’s just going to be one step at a time.”

 

PHOTO: Jon Gitchoff

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