Sam Rivers has been played over 30 times on NTS, first on 23 October 2014. Sam Rivers's music has been featured on 35 episodes.

Samuel Carthorne Rivers (September 25, 1923 – December 26, 2011), was an American jazz musician and composer. He performed on soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet, flute, harmonica and piano.

Rivers was born in Enid, Oklahoma. Active in jazz since the early 1950s, he earned wider attention during the mid-1960s spread of free jazz. With a thorough command of music theory, orchestration and composition, Rivers was an influential and prominent artist in jazz music.

Rivers's father was a gospel musician who had sung…