Jim Samsa: A 'Kid from Wisconsin" to Man with a Horn!
By CP Christopher Peppas
When the audience at a jazz jam hears the words: “Mr. & Mrs. Samsa’s little boy Jimmy!”, they have just heard or are about to hear a marvelous solo on the trumpet or flugelhorn performed by Jim Samsa.
And the solo will be enough to almost make the vocalist forget that he or she has to come back and finish the song.
Samsa has been a staple at many of the jams in the Milwaukee area for more than a decade. He has also been part of gigs at the Italian Community Center and recently was frontman for some shows at Crush Wine Bar.
The jam that started Samsa’s renaissance back to the stage and playing his beloved horns was at The Red Mill in Brookfield on Wednesday nights in the mid-2000s.
“I bounced around here and there,” Samsa said in a recent interview. “Sharon Schmidt really helped me get my chops back. She really encouraged me and brought me up to play on a lot of songs week after week.”
Sharon Schmidt has been chronicled on these pages many years ago and helped launch the careers of very many performers that you see on a regular basis around town. She performed with Six Friars & A Monk and played cruise ships and clubs for many years.
Sharon’s keyboard player was none other than Jeffrey Robert Michael Stoll and she also had the Godfather of The Drums, Joe Zarcone, to back up vocalists and jam with the various and sundry musicians who packed the place for just shy of nine years.
But the spark that ignited Samsa’s love of music in general and the trumpet in particular was lit decades earlier.
“I actually started out playing the piano,” Samsa said. “It was in the fourth or fifth grade that I was offered a trumpet to play. I always loved the trumpet. You can shout or scream or you can play real soft. And with each one, it has a different personality and that appealed to me.”
He continued to play in grade school and in high school at Appleton West. “West was rated Number One jazz ensemble in the State. I was lead trumpet.
“At my last concert (at West) Bobby Herriot from Kids from Wisconsin was there,” Samsa said. So impressed were the folks at “Kids” that they offered him a spot without having to go through their very rigorous audition process. He played with them for two years in 1971-72 on lead trumpet, of course.
From there, Samsa continued to immerse himself in music education, studying Applied Music at UW-Green Bay. It was there he got an offer to study at the Advanced Institute for Music Studies in Switzerland which led to playing at the Montreux Jazz Festival, where he was called out to play an encore, naturally.
Jim moved out to California and he ended up playing clubs and becoming a member of the house band at a place down the street from The Troubador.
In the late 1970s, Disco was all the rage and Samsa toured in a 10-piece band with Kirby Stone. They played in Las Vegas and The Virgin Islands. “That was my life on the road, so to speak,” Samsa recalled.
Jim co-founded the renowned jazz group, Streetlife, in the early 80s with noted drummer and percussionist, Tony Wagner. Samsa subsequently sold the name and band to Wagner who then brought Warren Wiegratz into the group where they went on to be the house band for The Milwaukee Bucks for more than twenty-five years.
Jim Samsa decided to work in the family business and stepped away from music completely. “You know, you have to make a living,” Samsa said. “You have a family, a house.”
In 2003, Jim had a serious health scare. “I looked at things differently from the other side (of his illness),” Jim said. “And I really missed playing the horn. For fifteen years, I didn’t even touch the horn.”
Samsa counts Lee Morgan, Miles Davis, Maynard Ferguson, Freddie Hubbard, Clark Terry and Doc Severinson among his influences. “You can learn from everyone, you know,” he said.
“You can play notes and make music or you make music by playing notes,” Jim said We’re just glad that he decided to come back to his first love and share his gift with all of us.
When you hear him lead the band with his signature numbers like When I Fall in Love, The Nearness of You, I Can’t Get Started and Black Orpheus, you will, no doubt, agree.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CP Christopher Peppas is a Journalist, Jazz Vocalist and Conga Player in the Greater Milwaukee Area and Correspondent at Large for the Jazz Unlimited Newsletter and Content Manager/Chief Contributor to CreativProse, Ltd. (sic), Social Media, Brand Management.
