Jazz Star Jahari Stampley's Time Has Come

Eric, wow, thank you for having me.

Thanks for joining us.

You have such an incredible upward arc to your career, especially these days.

Today you are literally being called a phenomenon.

But let's start, before we get to that part of you, let's start a little bit about your origin story and your musical roots.

Wow, well, I was born and raised in Chicago.

My mother and my grandmother played in church.

My mother was Grammy nominated artist and musician and she always had records around the house.

My father and my mother played a lot of music for me growing up and They never really forced me to play it.

I think that was a big thing for me was being able to do it when I really chose to do it.

By the time I started it was like I wanted to really do it.

I loved it so much.

You started on the drums but quickly soon found that you gravitated toward the piano.

Yeah, I started on the drums at the age of seven.

And I remember my first introduction to piano.

Although I was around it a lot, I never really started playing until I was about 14.

And I remember I came across a video on YouTube.

This guy is like a black guy that looked like me.

I'm like, this guy, I didn't know somebody like that could play piano like that.

And he was playing like classical renditions of popular pop songs.

And so I was really blown away and I remember that was my first start to piano.

I used to watch his fingers.

I didn't know the notes, I just knew the buttons and the shapes.

So I would mimic his shapes and his fingers, note for note, every movement.

until I really got that precise cover down.