When Samara Joy sings, the world stops. The tension melts away, the shoulders relax, serenity seems within reach.
The 23-year-old has a sound that is both timeless and fresh, mixing old school jazz crooning with the R&B singers she grew up with.
It is not yet known, but those who know, know.
And last month, the Grammys gave her the ultimate stamp of approval – awarding her Best Jazz Vocal Album and, more importantly, Best New Artist.
Recent winners of this latest award include household names like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo. To win, Joy had to beat chart regulars like Latto, Måneskin and Wet Leg.
Speaking in London a month after the ceremony, she recalls the moment Rodrigo opened the envelope and read her name.
“My eyes were closed and I was holding my little brother’s hand, and when she said my name, it was like, ‘Oh shoot, oh shoot, oh shoot!’
“All these people stood up for me, Adele, Lizzo, Taylor Swift…so I was completely flushed, completely humiliated.”
But when she arrived on stage, a chilling realization set in.
“I had left my phone behind,” she laughs, “so all my talk was just sitting at the table!”
After he timidly improvised his thanks, the night improved considerably.
“Beyoncé said congratulations to me after the show, which was ridiculous. Me in the same room as Beyonce? And she knew I existed? That’s just crazy.”
By this point, however, Joy should be used to receiving honors.
Although she only started jazz five years ago, she has already won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition and received the Ella Fitzgerald Memorial Scholarship.
Her voice is warm and melodious, lingering over notes as if sipping wine and simmering with emotional intensity.
She attributes some of that to her producer/manager, Matt Pierson, who told her to “act as if a microphone is the ear of the person listening to you.”
But she also possesses an innate ability to take an old standard and make the lyrics look like they were ripped from her diary.
It’s an approach that confuses fans unfamiliar with the jazz repertoire.
“People say, ‘I love your song, guess who I saw today?’ And I’m like, ‘I wish it was mine!’ she says of her most recent single, originally made famous by Nancy Wilson.
“Others are like, ‘Wow, I didn’t know this song before and it’s such a great story’. I find it amazing that people relate to it.”
Born Samara Joy McLendon, the singer grew up in the Bronx, New York, in a sheltered, church-centered home.
“My parents were very protective. My dad picked us up and dropped us off at school, we went to church together, we didn’t go to the mall, I didn’t really hang out or anything like that. .”
A studious child, she devoured fiction for teenagers (“the least popular, the least expensive”) and took part in codeathons with her school’s computer club.
But the music was still there. His paternal grandparents are Elder Goldwire and Ruth McLendon, who formed one of Philadelphia’s most prominent gospel groups, The Savettes; and his father was a bassist who toured with gospel icon Andraé Crouch.
Joy also tried bass, but it was the vocals that really fascinated her.
“I used to have an iPod Nano and my dad used to download music for me. I remember listening to Lalah Hathaway, Jill Scott, Stevie Wonder…and I loved Disney Channel songs too. High School Musical? It’s me.”
As she listened, she sorted out details like phrasing, timbre and vibrato, exploring what made one singer different from another.
“I was trying to copy every little thing and make sure I really paid attention to it.”
At the age of 16, she had been chosen to lead worship at her local church, at three services a week, for two years. The experience changed her forever.
“It basically taught me how to get over my nervousness, but it also helped me realize that performing wasn’t just about me.
“At church it’s like, ‘We’ve come to connect to something bigger than ourselves.’ So if I’m the vehicle for that, then I have to be completely free from any kind of ‘ego or nerves. me now.’
Addicted to jazz
Her first exposure to jazz was in high school, where she played “contemporary and fusion stuff” with a jazz band, but gospel was her focus until she enrolled in college.
Even then, she chose SUNY Purchase’s acclaimed jazz program more for its proximity to home than for the opportunity to study with jazz masters like Pasquale Grasso and drummer Kenny Washington (both of whom appeared on her debut album ).
“I remember the first day, I was so confused and felt left out,” she says, “but it turned out to be the best thing for me.”
When friends introduced her to Billie Holliday and Sarah Vaughan, she was “hooked”, applying the same analytical approach to jazz she had practiced on Disney soundtracks as a child.
“I was like, I’ve never heard of these women before. It was really an eye opener.”
Encouraged by her teachers, she won the prestigious Sarah Vaughan Jazz Competition in 2019, but her subsequent debut at the Newport Jazz Festival was abruptly scrapped when the pandemic hit.
Instead, her big break came on Facebook.
Asked to record a “thank you” video for the benefactors who funded her scholarship, she filmed herself singing Ella Fitzgerald’s Take Love Easy, accompanied by one of her teachers.
The next morning, the video had 4,000 views. Four days later, that figure had risen to one million, with Tony Award winner Audra McDonald among those praising her performance.
Seizing the opportunity, Joy set up a GoFundMe page, raising $8,000 (£6,500) to fund her debut album.
Recorded in two days and released by British label Whirlwind Recordings, the self-titled LP won rave reviews for its thoughtfully chosen collection of jazz standards, which recalled the golden age of singer-songwriters of the 1930s-1960s.
“I really wanted to focus on songs that no one else was doing, or that were really rare and that I could make mine,” says the singer, who borrowed her approach from Cécile McLorin Salvant. (“She has an amazing repertoire. The songs are so random but when she sings them, everything makes sense.”)
But touring the album made Joy realize she had relied too heavily on one aspect of her musical personality.
“Most of the songs [in my set] were a bit sad, so I wanted one that was about love, that wasn’t too cheesy.”
She opted for Can’t Get Out Of This Mood, previously recorded by Frank Sinatra and Nina Simone, “about the feeling of jitters you get when you fall in love”.
“It’s very positive and uplifting. I was like, ‘We can fit that into the set to break all the misery!'”
It became the centerpiece of her Grammy-winning second album, Linger A While; alongside Guess Who I Saw Today – the story of a cheating partner, delivered with jaw-dropping narrative tension.
Like her debut, Joy financed the recording herself before licensing it to historic jazz label Verve Recordings – proof that her scholarship of jazz greats extends beyond their music.
“I watched a lot of documentaries with my mom about how people in music are exploited, the context of artists’ lives, and navigating those business relationships,” she confesses.
The resulting independence is clever: after the Grammys, the bidding for his third album will be intense. But after experiencing the glamor of “music’s biggest night,” she’s wary of stardom.
“I’ve seen a lot of celebrities that I’ve only ever seen online and I was like, ‘Wow, you’re real’. But at the same time, I don’t want to be them.
“To be watched and put on a pedestal? It looks tough.
“So I’m like, ‘I’m cool, I’m cool. I’ll go home, I’ll take the subway, I’ll walk the streets and just be normal.
