In 2021, jazz vocalist Samara Joy graduated from college. Months later, she released her first album. Now, she has three. She’s won three Grammys and is up for two more for her latest Christmas release. Talk about joy to the world—she has sold-out concerts all over America and Europe and is lining them up in Asia and South America. Music critics are comparing her to jazz royalty Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald. Not bad for what she calls an accidental career. We caught up with her Christmas tour, singing what else?

You may know Samara Joy as a jazz headliner, but come December, she’s just one of the McLendon family. This year, her foray into Christmas music scored two Grammy nominations. 

It’s been a whirlwind few years. 

She’s as surprised as anyone at her head spinning success. After all, much of the jazz she sings was last popular a half century ago.  But with a voice as limber as a gymnast…

She’s given the old standards a cool new gloss.

Hard to believe that jazz was something she sort of stumbled upon.

Samara speaking during Purchase College concert: Freshman me had no idea that this was in store. Okay, that three years after graduation, I would be standing here before you like this.

This was a homecoming: the first time Samara Joy had returned to Purchase College in New York, where she studied jazz. 

It almost didn’t happen. She told us it was a toss-up between business or music.

Bill Whitaker: Well one of your professors told us that when you showed up for your audition that you only had one song prepared?

Samara Joy: I was like “this is the only jazz song that I know.” He allowed me to sing a hymn too, which was very nice of him. Very kind of him. Um but that was what I had to offer at that time.

Bill Whitaker: So what was it that pushed you on that path?

Samara Joy: I never wanted to regret it. I felt like I could always – even if I was in school for music, I could always get another job. But I – I just wanted to prioritize it first. 

Bill Whitaker: Worked out.

Samara Joy: Worked out. I’d say so.

She recorded her first songs in college—with help from her professors—and posted them online. 

Soon, she had a record deal. Critics say she sings like an old soul.

But when she got her first Grammy nominations in 2022, she went full Gen Z, sharing the moment with millions online.

Bill Whitaker: You danced? You, you shouted?

Samara Joy: Yeah, in New York, nobody cared. Nobody cared at all. They’re like, “Just another Tuesday” to them. 

And then… 

She won. Both. Including the Grammy for best new artist. 

Samara Joy during Grammy acceptance speech: Oh my gosh, I can’t even believe—I’ve been watching y’all on TV for like so long. So, to be here with you all, I’m so, so grateful, thank you.

Bill Whitaker: So where are you keeping all this golden hardware?

Samara Joy: They’re with my parents. 

Bill Whitaker: They knew you wanted to do this?

Samara Joy: Yeah. And my dad, you know, he’s a singer and a musician. My grandparents were singers. And my aunts and uncles. Music is a part of my family. It’s an integral part of how we express ourselves and share, you know, love for each other.

Bill Whitaker: So there was no way you were gonna be an accountant?

Samara Joy: Nope.

Joy celebrated online too. Her Instagram and TikTok accounts are pulling in a younger crowd, a rarity in jazz. They come for the ride and stay for the music. 

Now with a bigger band, Samara Joy’s third album, “Portrait,” is her most ambitious yet. 

She’s writing her own songs, drawing inspiration from the jazz canon of the 1940s and 50s. 

Bill Whitaker: And you’re how old now?

Samara Joy: Twenty-four. Oh gosh. I just turned 25. I forgot.

Bill Whitaker: What do you think when you hear yourself compared to Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald?

Samara Joy: When I first got to Purchase, Ella and Sarah were the first people that I listened to. They were part of my fundamental, you know, core and fundamental foundation.

Bill Whitaker: How do you make Ella fit you?

Samara Joy: Listening to her, and listening to all of these singers, I feel like it allowed me to, to shape my idea of what my role could be as a vocalist. Not just learn the melody, sing the melody and that’s it. But you really have to think like a musician and open your ears to what’s happening around you so that you can contribute to it and interact with it.

Christian McBride: Her voice is going to be remembered for a long, long time.

Christian McBride is a world-renowned bassist, we met him at Minton’s Jazz Club in Harlem. McBride told us, joy is a once-in-a-generation talent. He first heard her sing in 2019. He was a judge in a competition she had entered.

Bill Whitaker: And in comes Samara Joy and you’re goin—what?

Christian McBride: We see this young woman with this voice. She had such a mature sound and a way of having you believe what she was singing. We’re like, “Huh? Who—whose grandma’s in that little body, in that young body, you know?” 

She was born Samara McLendon. Joy is her middle name but she’ll tell you the McLendon name is her secret power. Her grandfather sang with the acclaimed Savettes, a gospel group out of Philadelphia. Her father toured with gospel superstar Andrae Crouch. Gospel was the lifeblood of the McLendon household.

Bill Whitaker: So how does gospel fit in with your music?

Samara Joy: It’s an inspiration and a—an influence that will never go away in my voice. And I don’t want it to. It’s been a part of my life, and in my ears, and in my voice um for so long that it’s just an innate part of who I am, I feel like and it just reminds me that this is, this is for a higher purpose. 

Christian McBride told us, Joy’s gospel upbringing gives her voice an emotional depth not all jazz singers can muster.

Christian McBride: In jazz, you get points for being smart. You get points for being creative. You don’t always get points for tapping into the emotional pool. And I find that um, all of my favorite singers who come outta church—Sarah Vaughan being one of them, Aretha Franklin, obviously all – all the way down through somebody like Samara, there’s that little thing. They, they can get here quicker, you know? 

Bill Whitaker: You grew up with R&B and gospel and you could’ve gone in that direction but you chose to go toward jazz, why?

Samara Joy: If anything I kinda felt at home with jazz, you know. I felt like I could still be myself while I was learning about all of this – this new language. I could still absorb it and then apply it in my own way. 

She was raised in a close-knit family in the Bronx. So how do you know a McLendon? Give ’em a mic. It’s a family joke, but everybody sang. All the time.

Joy’s father told us, his daughter was always experimenting.

Or mimicking artists on the radio. so when Tony McLendon joined us, we had to ask…

Bill Whitaker: So I understand that um, you two are pretty good at car karaoke?

Tony McLendon: Oh, yeah.

Bill Whitaker: Can you give us a little taste?

Samara Joy: (Bursts into laughter) We, okay, so we did go to the um, the Stevie Wonder concert. And on the way home we were singing along to one of my favorite deep cuts of Stevie.

Samara Joy: See, if—another thing about a McLendon, we don’t remember the words to anything.

Tony McLendon: We don’t remember.

We met more McLendons as part of Joy’s Christmas tour in Morristown, New Jersey…

…where she was joined by her dad, her cousins and an uncle.

No one is more pivotal to the McLendon family than its 94-year-old patriarch, Elder Goldwire, Joy’s grandfather. He told us, he was in awe of her. And you just know what happened next…

But nothing prepared us for the power Elder Goldwire unleashed on stage. His frailty vanished. 

The McLendon legacy looks to be in safe hands with Samara Joy. She may not have planned for a career in jazz but she told us, she thinks she’ll stick with it. 

Produced by Heather Abbott and LaCrai Scott. Associate producer, Mariah Johnson. Edited by Craig Crawford.

Bill Whitaker

Bill Whitaker is an award-winning journalist and 60 Minutes correspondent who has covered major news stories, domestically and across the globe, for more than four decades with CBS News.