About

Born in 1927, Sam Middleton was raised by a single mother in Harlem - a place he felt was going to condemn him to doom (“I was going to become a junkie or end up in jail”) if he didn’t find a way to escape it. The Merchant Marines took him abroad when he was 17.

Glimpses of joy came through music, which was everywhere in Harlem, including across the street from his home at the Savoy Ballroom, where he would sneak in when his mother sent him out to do errands. Jazz became a life-long love and influence. Middleton moved to Greenwich Village in the 1950s and began to spend time at the Cedar …