173. Sam Amabile

The Poets is now available on VIDEO. Check today's episode on the Coven Recording and Sound channel. Hope you enjoy. --- Sam Amabile returns to The Poets to discuss and promote Mercury Nights, his most recent EP. Get the album HERE. Mercury Nights is a callback to the lost Friday nights which once took place at 2199 California Street. For decades, Friday night open mics saw poets from all walks take the stage in the Jungle Room to speak their art to a room of waiting friends and strangers. All the while next door in the Rose Room, Sam Amabile laid a soundtrack for the evening. Once a consistent Friday night presence on the piano in the back corner, Sam Amabile now gives us Mercury Nights, a showcase of his unique playing style and talent. --- I met Marilyn back in 2016. I was playing with the David Booker band upstairs in the ballroom at the Mercury for swing night. We were playing Chuck Berry and Big Joe Turner, which probably annoyed the dancers but Marilyn liked it. After the show she asked me to write my name down in her book of musicians and soon after she booked me to play in the Rose Room. I played nearly every week from then until it became the Pearl. In the early days of the mercury there was a man named George “Boogie Woogie” Daniels who was a regular fixture that Marilyn told me about. Im grateful I could bring back some Boogie Woogie for the final years. Oh and i should say R.I.P. to David Booker Sam