With his sweet guitar licks and warm, soulful voice that brings the sunshine, bluesman Sam Lindo has been brightening up Nottingham shoppers’ days for the past 20 years. Always smiling, his relaxing mix of Elvis-style singing and Hendrix-like playing has proved a winning combination with people of all generations.
“People seem to like what I’m doing and look forward to hearing me,” said the-then 50-something Jamaican-born musician back in 2004. “I try to play the music that makes people feel good.”
Playing guitar since he was 14, Sam began busking in the city in 2002. “If I can play my music, make somebody feel good and put a smile on somebody’s face, then I feel it’s worth my while,” he says.
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By day he’d perform around Lister Gate and Albert Street, but he’s not afraid to bang out a few tunes to revellers in the evening along Long Row, even if they have a habit of taking over the mike. “We get people dancing, people drunk. It’s quite cool actually,” he said.
He has tried being in bands but says the experience was too stressful and instead prefers his lot as a solo musician. People often ask him for requests, which usually range from Jimi Hendrix and Elvis Presley to Oasis, but he has been asked to play the Postman Pat theme tune before.
His playing has been likened to American bluesman BB King and guitar maestro Jimi Hendrix, but he does possess a certain unique quality and once released an album of his own called Love’s Realities. A devoutly religious person, he attributes his talent as a ‘gift’.
Speaking in 2003, he told the BBC: “I think music is a wonderful creation, you know, of God. I think it’s just as important as food or clothing. It’s a spiritual thing which was made for the hearing. We’re made with five senses. Your eyes are made to see and I think your ears are made for music.”
His parents came to Britain in the fifties, leaving him behind to be raised by grandparents, though by 1967 he had joined them at their Watcombe Circus home in Sherwood.
“It was great. I was a youngster then and it was a new world to me. At first, when I came here I was a little homesick but that quickly faded. This is my home now. It’s a nice city, it’s got a lot of life to it,” he said.
When Sam arrived in England he met his brothers and sisters for the first time. His mum made him a massive plate of rice but Sam only ate half of it because he ‘didn’t want them to think I was greedy’.
The very next morning his mum took him downstairs and rustled up a lunch of baked beans and a potato. “Man, the thing tasted nice!” he chuckled when asked about it in 2018.
Sam first got into music by listening to the radio, soaking up jazz, blues and ragtime which fuelled his passion both for the guitar and the piano. He got his first ‘axe’ at 15, bought by his father for a very reasonable £6.
A young Sam would always wear it over his shoulder and practise for hours until he felt good enough to play with the local church band. When he left school, Sam worked in the cable phone department for a firm that built telephone equipment.
He eventually left, got married and moved to London to work for British Telecom before later moving back to the city he loves. The bluesman is a huge fan of Nottingham and enjoys it because ‘it’s not too big and it’s not too small’.
He says it’s a place where you can interact with people and everyone always has time to say hello or do a little dance. The self-taught guitarist has enjoyed watching the city’s kids growing up throughout the years, with some even reminiscing with him about the times he sang them Happy Birthday as kids.
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