Sammie “Big Sam” Williams is a New Orleans native and the great-grandson of jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden. He studied with saxophonist Kidd Jordan and at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, and as a teenager was a founding member of the Stooges Brass Band. In 1999 he joined his childhood idols, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, playing alongside them for about four years.
In 2001 he started his own band, Big Sam's Funky Nation, as a side project with high school and University of New Orleans friends. The first gig was a Sunday night at the Funky Butt — a packed house — and by about 2003 he had left the Dozen to lead the Nation full time. The band blends funk, rock, hip-hop, jazz, and New Orleans grooves, and has played Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Voodoo Fest, and South By Southwest.
Along the way Big Sam recorded with Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint on The River in Reverse (2006), appeared in the documentary Make It Funky!, and had a recurring role on HBO's Treme. The Funky Nation has nine albums to its name, from Birth of a Nation (2003) to No More Shakes (2020), and has been named Best Band and Best Funk Band by OffBeat, Gambit's Big Easy Awards, and Where Y'at magazine.
