Music journalist Lee Hildebrand wrote in the East Bay Express that Sam Rudin is "an enormous talent" whose "scope is near limitless" and the venerable jazz critic Phil Elwood once described the singing pianist as "an astute assembler of sounds and styles" and "a thoroughly enjoyable entertainer." Describing his approach, Rudin says of himself "when I play blues festivals I'm the jazz guy, and when I play jazz festivals I'm the blues guy."
The eclectic Rudin take on musical Americana has made him a consistent crowd-pleaser at such Bay Area clubs as the Freight and Salvage and Anna's Jazz Island in Berkeley, the Last Day Saloon and Wolfgang's in San Francisco, the two Keystones (Berkeley and Palo Alto) and at hundreds of outdoor events throughout California, including the Monterey Blues Festival, the Strawberry Music Festival, and the Sonoma Jazz Festival. Rudin's piano influences are diverse. JoAnn Castle, the honky-tonk piano queen of the Lawrence Welk Show, was one of the earliest. Her music led him to that of stride piano titan Fats Waller. Earl "Fatha" Hines was another favorite, particularly his 1940 hit recording of "Boogie Woogie on the St. Louis Blues." Hines’s percussive attack can be felt in many of Rudin’s improvisations, although he says he "never tried to copy any pianist exactly."
Blues came to Rudin, through a back door of sorts, via the blues-informed sounds of The Animals, the British rock band that featured vocalist Eric Burdon and pianist Alan Price. "They put an album out called Animal Tracks that had two pop hits on it, which is why I bought the record, and then all the other cuts were blues," Rudin recalls. "It really spoke to me. I said, ’I want to do this.’"
"That was when I first tried to sit at the piano and do stuff that was not written on the page," adds the pianist, who was 13 at the time. "I was getting old enough to understand that what I had been learning as a kid, which was all classical music, wasn’t the whole deal."
The pianist further developed his trademark style by studying the music of whole bands, rather than just those of individual pianists. "I tried to get that rhythmic flavor just by myself on the piano," he explains. "My piano textures rhythmically are generally influenced by entire bands, which I would then try to funnel through my own two hands."
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Rudin was 15 when he played in his first band, a high school combo that covered the hits by rock and pop groups of the period. The pianist, who then played Farfisa organ, encouraged the band to stretch out on songs, rather than simply copy the original records. He worked his way through college playing with a variety of groups before landing a job playing state fairs and oldies shows with Chubby Checker of "The Twist" renown. He later spent a year on the road with Sister Sledge, the Philadelphia soul-singing group famous for "We Are Family."
Rudin’s first gig under his own name as a bandleader came when he was 24. It proved to be ill-fated. He and his group had been hired to play on a cruise ship. They’d been at sea only a day when a hurricane struck off the North Carolina coast, destroying all of the band’s equipment.
After that incident, some of Rudin's musician friends, referring also to his high-energy, can't-sit-down performing style, started calling him Hurricane Sam. Eventually he embraced the moniker and launched a career as a solo performer, earning a reputation for bringing the rhythmic intensity of an entire band, and for utilizing the whole range of 20th century American music "from blues to be-bop and from ragtime to rock'n'roll" as some early publicity put it. When he formed a band several years later to concentrate on that blues/jazz borderline, they were "Hurricane Sam and the Hot Shots."
He no longer uses that stage name, however. "It was a hard decision, because I have a lot of affection for that name, and it represents a certain period of my life, and of course a lot of people know me that way. But for those who don't know who I am or what I do, I think maybe 'Hurricane Sam' sounds like a hard-core blues guy, or maybe a novelty act. And I guess I was just ready to have my own name back."
Rudin relocated from Philadelphia to Oakland after helping a friend move to California and falling in love with the Bay Area. He worked briefly with Back in the Saddle, a popular western swing band, after the band’s guitarist had broken an arm, and for a period with veteran blues and soul wailer Frankie Lee.
Soon, however, he became a popular fixture of the area’s club scene, both as a solo performer and with his band, often opening shows for such artists as Elvin Bishop, James Cotton, David Crosby, Jerry Garcia, Albert King, Taj Mahal, the Roches, and Jerry Jeff Walker, as well as his early favorite Eric Burdon. For outdoor engagements, he often carried an upright piano on wheels, which he could easily roll off his trailer. He still does when the occasion calls for it.
Rudin"s first CD, Piano Madness, was released on the Blue Rock'it label in 1992. The selections were evenly split between solo and band performances. The musical influences were evenly split as well, encompassing blues, jazz, rock, country, and even bluegrass. (It should be mentioned that Rudin might be the only person in the world who can play Earl Scruggs banjo licks on the piano.)
After a long recording hiatus, a new CD has emerged -- this time with 90% band material and a more consistent flavor -- that flavor being familiar R & B tunes played with a jazz sensibility. The album , Once or Twice a Week, features the outstanding Bay Area musicians that Sam has been playing with this last decade: Danny Caron, (guitar) best known for being Charles Brown's musical director for many years; Jeff Ervine (sax), the powerhouse of the band Stompy Jones and Zazu Pitts before that; George Brooks (sax), the widely acclaimed jazz sideman and leader of "Indian fusion" music; Steve Evans (bass) the wildly in-demand player known for his work with Etta James, Roy Rogers, Coco Montoya, and so many others; Mike Hyman (drums), now a fixture in the New York jazz scene; and Jimmy Sanchez & Jimmy Hobson (drums) taking over on some tracks.
Six of the ten tracks feature Sam's distinctive rough-hewn vocals, and all of them showcase his breathtaking command of the piano keyboard.
To a certain segment of the Bay Area music community, Rudin may be best known as a master teacher. More than a few local professionals have come to him to refine their technique or expand their scope, and his teaching studio is always fully booked. "I love teaching, but sometimes I teach so much, I forget to get out there and play."
Perhaps this new release can change that. One or Twice a Week serves as a remarkable document of Rudin’s lifelong passion for the piano. It’s the result of his having filtered a wide variety of genres through his fingers and fused them into an immensely entertaining style of his own. There are few piano players performing today as accomplished and exciting as Sam Rudin. Show less
