Sam Brown

Great things were long anticipated from British vocalist and keyboardist Sam Brown. Her first album, Stop!, arrived in 1987 and climbed to the Top Four on the British music charts while selling more than two-and-a-half million copies, driven by the hit singles “Stop” and “This Feeling.” Later releases such as April Moon, 43 Minutes, The Kissing Game, and Box never duplicated that level of commercial impact. As the daughter of classical vocalist Vicki Brown, she entered the music world at age twelve, supplying background vocals for the Small Faces’ album 78 in the Shade. By the time she reached twenty she had already recorded with Steve Marriott, Sade, Spandau Ballet, and Barclay James Harvest. She later contributed harmony vocals to Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell and accompanied the band on its 1994 world tour. After returning to England in April 1995 she appeared with the Jools Holland Big Band, then performed the following summer with Holland’s R&B Orchestra.

Although her debut had been a major success, difficulties surfaced with the follow-up April Moon, which produced no singles. The death of her mother in 1991 created a profound emotional loss that found expression the next year in the intimate album 43 Minutes. When A&M declined to issue the record, Brown took legal action to regain ownership of the tapes. After prevailing in a lengthy court fight she issued the album in the United Kingdom on her own Pod Music imprint. In July 1996 she played organ on a track for the multi-artist collection Reaching Out, whose proceeds benefited the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Center. That November she launched her first solo tour, joined by her father Joe Brown and the Subway Soopa Stringz.