Profiles in Pink: Sam Dillon

Sam Dillon is a tenor saxophonist and native New Yorker who lives in a converted fire station in Greenwich Village on the Lower West Side of Manhattan. He will be at the London Jazz Festival this November, playing at the Toulouse Lautrec club on 15 and 16 November with his jazz quartet. Sam is a regular on the New York jazz scene, has degrees in music from a bunch of colleges, including New York’s prestigious Juilliard and has played on Grammy-winning and nominated recordings. Currently he plays in the Birdland Big Band, the Slide Hampton Octet, the 8-Bit Big Band and the famous Mingus Big Band, as well as fronting the Sam Dillon Quartet. Here, wearing a crisp Thomas Pink white shirt, he talks to us about music, his personal style and where to go to listen to jazz in NYC.

I grew up in a loft in Tribeca in New York and then moved to Great Neck, Long Island. My parents were native New Yorkers and full-blown hippies – they were at Woodstock, that sort of thing. My mum is an artist, an abstract painter; she’s actually got some shows coming up – she’s still going strong, doing her thing. My father dabbled with becoming a jazz drummer but ended up as an architect, though I played with him later on, which was fun.

My grandfather on my mother’s side was into big musicals. Every time I’d go over to my grandparents’ house, I would be watching Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire movies. I actually even took some tap dance lessons. So it was in my ear, you know, all the show tunes. So when I finally heard Eddie Harris’ Exodus to Jazz, which was one of the first albums I ever dug into... when I finally heard the sound of that swing, there was something natural to me about it. It just hit me and it never left. It was everything. That feeling of the combination of intellect, soul and somehow the most organic reflection of just being human – there’s something in jazz that is unlike anything else. And for me it had logical roots in the show music that I had been listening to as a kid. It was familiar.

I had a couple of violin lessons when I was a kid but that didn’t work out. Then when we moved to Long Island I had to choose an instrument at school when I was about 10 and I picked the saxophone for whatever reason. Maybe I heard the Pink Panther theme tune and I thought that was cool? I really didn’t realise I was choosing the quarterback of instruments! First they gave me an alto [saxophone] but I immediately wanted to switch to tenor [saxophone]. So I started on tenor the second year and I just loved it. I thought it was so cool. I still do – I even like the smell of the instrument.

I was a fairly quick study with getting a sound and trying to play, there was something about it that came naturally. And I think my sound from the very beginning was pretty good. Around 12 or 13 I first heard Blue Train [the album by John Coltrane]. And I mean that is just one of the greatest recorded tenor sounds ever – the way [John Col]Trane hits that F. I would listen to that F in the blend of the band, not even in the solo, and just try to imagine how the reed felt and try to think about how the mouthpiece was lined up. I just focused on the depth and the power that was in that one note, intently listening to just that note. It’s in my ear forever. That was the sound and I would sit and try to match it.

I played a lot in county, state and national bands, and when I was in college at the University of Miami and then at NYU and Juilliard I was already playing professionally – you know, cocktail hour stuff with older musicians and going out to sessions and being around, playing gigs on Long Island and doing club date stuff. For the first two or three years out of college I’ve never practiced so hard in my life – about 10 hours every day because you want to make a good impression. I started to get called by this great trumpet player David Weiss, who always kind of keeps an ear out for the next talented guys and he started calling me for these late-night gigs at Fat Cat.

It’s now called Cellar Dog but it’s still there and it’s one of my favourite places to play. It was one of the only places in the city where the gig would start at 1am and go to 4am. And the drummer was this guy Paris Wright, the son of a great bass player, Herman Wright. He was on drums and Dave was on trumpet and all of a sudden I was just playing at one o’clock in the morning with these great musicians.

That’s how it’s worked for me. I’ve never submitted my resumé for a job. There’s something to be said for surviving New York City and being a working musician for long enough where, if you’re around and you’re really going for it and you’re doing it because you love it, not because you’re trying to get into this or that band, then you’ll get the call. That’s how I got to play in the Mingus Big Band. For that you are definitely “called”. I was still at Juilliard, it must have been 2015, and I was recommended through a great saxophone player, my friend Brandon Wright. He was in the band and he suggested they try me in the mix. And I think others in the band already knew of me so when my name came up they said yes. I’ll always remember that was when Charles Mingus’s wife Sue was still alive – she started the Mingus Big Band after he died to keep his music alive – and she was still coming to the shows. I only ever had a single one-on-one exchange with her. I played and I went over and introduced myself to her, and she just took my hand and she said, ‘You’ll do’.

When I started to play seriously – in 2004. I’ve put out four albums, and by the end of the year there will be six. We’re actually playing at the London Jazz Festival in November. We’re at the Toulouse Lautrec jazz club for two nights – the first is 15 November, the opening night of the festival – doing a mixture of standards and my own compositions. I’m also giving a masterclass the second day at one of the conservatories.

Many have been with the Mingus Big Band – we played the Jazz Festival at the Blue Note [jazz club] in Tokyo. And we toured all over – our last gig was on Thanksgiving in India. That was amazing. And winning the Grammy with the 8-Bit Big Band in 2023. I’m also on the album by the Mingus Big Band that was Grammy nominated [The Charles Mingus Centennial Sessions Vol.1]. We didn’t win but I have the nomination flag, right? And actually, I have a solo on the album that we just released, The Charles Mingus Centennial Sessions Vol.2. Maybe that will get nominated too...

My first big recording was with the Joe Chambers Moving Pictures Orchestra. We had this big gig at Dizzy’s Club [at the Lincoln Center in New York, named for legendary jazz trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie] and it was like a star-studded group of guys, and I was the young, young kid. I remember turning around. It was like Conrad Herwig and Steve Davis were next to each other in the trombone section. I show up and I get a solo and it’s actually put out – they put the solo out on the recording. It was amazing because I had like five espressos and just got so amped for this gig, and I was so nervous but so proud. It was the first time I was doing anything substantial. And I’ll never forget Joe Chambers – you know, he’s the boss; he can be a rough guy sometimes, but he was cool with me. I just remember we came backstage after the first set and he looked at me and said, ‘You young guys sure do like to play a lot of notes’.

If I could just sit in with the John Coltrane Quartet, yeah, that would be it, as an extra tenor sax player, making the quartet a quintet. Or not even sit in [and play]; just to be there and see it.

Blue Train is really special because it’s the one date that [Col]Trane did for Blue Note [the famous jazz record label] under his own name. And in one of his interviews, they asked him which one of the albums that he’s made is his favourite? And he said, Blue Train. I just fell in love with it. Not only does it have all of these different kinds of original compositions in it that he played, it’s also such an incredible example of him playing his extension of the bebop vocabulary. It’s just such a classic, with that completely virtuosic, awe-inspiring tenor sound.

John Coltrane. There’s no question. His desire to bring people together and where his heart was at. I think he set an example of what we’re striving to get to. Maybe it’s a cliché to say Coltrane and it feels like you’re just saying the obvious thing but it’s so true that it doesn’t matter. But you know, another huge hero of mine is [saxophonist] Michael Brecker. He played with the Mingus Big Band and to my mind he’s almost like a modern John Coltrane because he really came from a place of studying the people that came before him and arrived at his sound through study and then moved music forward. He was one of the first guys to start playing the EWI saxophone, which is an electronic wind instrument. I haven’t even tried to play that yet. I think for a while back then he was viewed as more of a studio sax player because he was doing so many different kinds of musical projects that involved electric instruments and exploring different sounds and all sorts of stuff. But now he’s been given the credit as being one of the best saxophone players because he also did all these recordings with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea and his own recordings. He just took everything that he could from the tradition and moved it forward. He’s a huge, huge influence for me as well.

I like the slick, straightforward, simple kind of style. Look at the casual shots of [John Col]Trane – I kind of dig that simplistic white-shirt look. But I do also dig Sonny Rollins, he has a really cool sense of style. Like, if you look at all the periods of time that he went through, like the ‘60s and ‘70s, he’s super fashionable. It’s super hip. He’s got his own thing going on with the way he was combing his beard. So that’s cool too. So I could go back and forth between Sonny and [Cole]Trane just as I go back and forth between them musically.

Everything you do is an extension of your soul, of yourself. So, you know, you want to be representing yourself in a positive light in every way you can. I think that how you look and how you come across is all connected to everything you are in the first place. Jazz players are particular and there’s a distinguished quality to how they tend to look, absolutely. But I also do notice that things are changing with that a little bit and there is a younger wave of guys and girls that are kind of doing a little bit more of a dress down, casual thing. And I noticed some guys are even picking up the horn and wearing a sleeveless shirt and flashing the arms – just looking like a tough guy. But, you know, there’s pictures of Sonny Rollins that are like that, when he did the Freedom Suite album. So I think guys end up going through different stages. I do think that the distinction is, though, that where rockers might be a little sloppy and doing the grunge thing, even if the jazz musician chooses to dress down there’s a little more going on – there’s a finer detail. It’s not just going to look sloppy. It’s going to be a deliberate T-shirt or a deliberate look, even if it’s dressed down.

I do so many different kinds of gigs – I have probably about 50 sideman recordings that I’m on. That’s when it’s someone else’s show. And I have four albums as a leader. And I play in all these different live bands, as well as my own. So I keep it simple: usually all black. I do pride myself on being a well-turned-out musician, so for most gigs a black suit, black shirt, or white shirt, works. No tie. But a nice fitted shirt with a suit. I like that.

I like something that looks really slick. And I like a clean look. I like something that fits well but doesn’t hug too tight. I’m just a slick kind of guy. I like a minimal vibe. Even the watch I wear: I don’t like gold, I like silver. Not that I couldn’t get fancy and swirly and creative if I needed to – that’s a look. But I like clean cut. Kind of artfully simplistic.

Oh, man... to do what you’ve been doing, right? That’s what my dad said to me when I was 15 and everyone was thinking about becoming a doctor or a lawyer. I said: ‘Dad, what am I going to do?’ And he said: ‘Do what you’ve been doing’.