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Stories   >   Samara Joy's 'Linger Awhile' is #1 on the 2023 NACC JAZZ: YEAR-END TOP 10

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Samara Joy's 'Linger Awhile' is #1 on the 2023 NACC JAZZ: YEAR-END TOP 10

Posted: December 14, 2023

The 2023 Chart Year Is Over & We Have Your Year-End Recap! A full year-end NACC 200 as well as year-end Top 50 charts for NACC NEXT, NACC Non-Comm, NACC Canadian, and Singles, plus our Blues, Chill, Electronic, Folk, Heavy, Hip Hop, Jazz, Latin, R&B/Soul, & World genre charts are available to NACC subscribers.

We thank you so much if you took the time to log in and report your charts this year. Thank you for championing up-and-coming artists as well as supporting the veteran artists and bands that don't see sizable (or any) commercial play. There is no place else on the radio dial or online/digitally to find such a bounty of intelligent, intriguing, challenging, well-reviewed, and just plain good music. Whether you are part of a station executive board, a DJ, a label head or employee, an indie promoter, a publicist, a tour manager, a musician, part of a music association, a music supervisor, a digital music, podcast or video service employee, or just a dedicated music fan, we're so happy you are a part of this community and feel strongly about participating in creating, utilizing, and promoting charts that quantify support for these artists. We're excited to be a part of it too!

We asked industry members and music programmers alike to share their personal Top 10 Albums of 2023 as well as their thoughts on the music that came out this year.  Samara Joy's ‘Linger Awhile’ makes the #1 spot on the 2023 NACC JAZZ: YEAR-END TOP 10.

Once-in-a-generation vocalist Samara Joy released ‘Linger Awhile’ via Verve Records in 2023 and the recording was her full-length album debut for the label. At just 22 years old, Samara has already garnered critical acclaim for a voice “as rich as custard” (The New York Times) and a delivery that is  “disarming [and] unhurried” (NPR Fresh Air), just as she has built a devoted following on TikTok and made avowed fans of Regina King, LaKeith Stanfield, and others. The Bronx native took home the 2019 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition prize while still in college and performed on The Today Show earlier this year. Hailed as an “exciting boundary-stretcher” by the  (The Boston Globe), Samara also made her “glowing, auspicious debut” (NPR) at the Newport Jazz Festival last weekend, earning multiple standing ovations in the process.

Linger Awhile finds Samara updating beloved songs with a modern twist, sometimes singing original lyrics using the melodies of famous instrumental solos, a style known as vocalese. Recorded at Sear Sound in New York City and featuring exemplary musicianship by Pasquale Grasso (guitar), Ben Paterson (piano), David Wong (double bass), and Kenny Washington (drums), the tracklist is comprised of reinvented classics including “Someone to Watch Over Me” (George Gershwin), “'Round Midnight” (Thelonious Monk), and “Nostalgia (The Day I Knew)” (Fats Navarro). Linger Awhile not only highlights Samara’s timeless vocals and a musical wisdom beyond her years, it also introduces this foundational popular music to a fresh audience.

“I am deeply honored to be a part of a roster that has included so many of my greatest vocal inspirations: Sarah, Billie, Ella, and Betty to name a few,” says Samara about her Verve debut. “Being a part of this lineage is humbling, and I will continue to use all of the inspiration gleaned from them to pursue my own unique journey as a singer and an artist.”

Watch the visualizer for lead single “Can’t Get Out of This Mood” here: https://samarajoy.lnk.to/ThisMoodVisualizer

Samara Joy has also announced a new string of 2022 tour dates throughout Europe and North America. The young vocalist will play club dates, festivals and cultural institutions, plus highly-anticipated NYC hometown shows at The Blue Note. Later this year, Samara will perform with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for a handful of dates across the midwest before several holiday shows in December. Check out the full touring schedule below.

Music has always been a guiding presence within Samara’s family. Her grandparents, Elder Goldwire and Ruth McLendon, led the well-known Philadelphia-based gospel group, The Savettes, and her father toured with the renowned Andrae Crouch. Although her earliest influences are the gospel and R&B sounds of Stevie Wonder, Lalah Hathaway, George Duke, and Musiq Soulchild, Samara fell in love with jazz while attending Fordham High School for the Arts, where she performed regularly with the jazz band and eventually won Best Vocalist at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington competition. Samara attended SUNY Purchase and recently graduated as the Ella Fitzgerald Scholar.

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