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Freedom sound of the ’60s
CHRIS SEARLE explores how a group of schoolfriends banded together to create powerful jazz grooves in Los Angeles

Freedom Sound/Lookin’ Ahead (Fresh Sound FSR CD 751) and At The Lighthouse ’62 (Fresh Sound FSR CD 807)
The Jazz Crusaders

THEY were high school classmates in Houston, Texas when they first started grooving together. Tenor saxophonist Welton Fielder, pianist Joe Sample and drummer Nesbert “Stix” Hooper, soon to be joined by trombonist Wayne Henderson.

Thirsty for a life in music, they moved to the much more jazz-inclined Los Angeles in 1960, and with changing bass-men they took on the name of the Jazz Crusaders.

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