Samuel Dockery (1929 – December 21, 2015), nicknamed Sure-Footed Sam, was a hard bop pianist and well-respected musician on the Philadelphia jazz scene since the early 1950s.[. See also: "A Veteran Piano Man Just Keeps on Playing" , Philadelphia Inquirer, August 9, 1996] Dockery was born in Camden, New Jersey.[ "Samuel Dockery, 86; Philadelphia jazz pianist"] He appears on 11 recordings as the pianist for Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers and composed "Sam's Tune" which appears on their 1957 Blue Note recording .[Alan Goldsher, Hard bop academy: the sidemen of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Hal Leonard Corporation, 2002, p. 91. ] In 1963 he was the pianist for Betty Carter's extended engagement at Birdland,[William R. Bauer, Open the Door: The Life and Music of Betty Carter, University of Michigan Press, 2003, p.91.] and headed The Sam Dockery Trio in Philadelphia during the 1990s. He also taught at Philadelphia's University of the Arts.[ He died in a nursing home in 2015, aged 86.]
Discography
With Art Blakey
-
Hard Bop (Columbia, 1956)
-
Originally (Columbia Records, 1956) - unreleased until 1982
-
Drum Suite (Columbia, 1956)
-
Mirage (Savoy Records, 1957)
-
(Pacific Jazz, 1957)
-
Selections from Lerner and Loewe's... (RCA Victor, 1957)
-
A Night in Tunisia (Vik, 1957)
-
Cu-Bop (Jubilee Records, 1957)
-
Tough! (Cadet Records, 1957 1966)
-
Hard Drive (Bethlehem, 1957)
With Clifford Brown
-
The Beginning and the End (Columbia, 1973) - 1956 performance recorded in Philadelphia
With Butch Ballard and Dylan Taylor
