Lionel Hampton
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Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002), was a jazz percussionist and bandleader. He was the first jazz vibraphone player and arguably the greatest ever. "Hamp" ranks among the great names in jazz history, having worked with a who's who of jazz musicians, from Benny Goodman to Buddy Rich to Charlie Parker and Quincy Jones.
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[edit] Life
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Hampton moved to Chicago as a child and began his career as a drummer. He relocated to Los Angeles to play drums in Les Hite's band. They soon became the house band for Frank Sebastian's New Cotton Club, a popular L.A. jazz club.
In the mid-30s, the Benny Goodman Orchestra came to Los Angeles to play the Palomar Ballroom. John Hammond brought Goodman to see Hampton play. Goodman asked Hampton to join the Benny Goodman Trio, made up of Goodman, Teddy Wilson, and Gene Krupa, expanding it into the Benny Goodman Quartet. The Trio and Quartet were among the first racially integrated jazz groups to record and play before wide audiences; they were as well received at Goodman's famous 1938 Carnegie Hall concert as the full Goodman band.
While Hampton worked for Goodman in New York, he recorded with several different small groups known as the Lionel Hampton Orchestra as well as assorted small groups within the Goodman band. In the early 40s he left the Goodman organization to form his own touring band.
Beginning in the mid-1980s, Hampton and his band started playing at the University of Idaho's jazz concert, which in 1985 was renamed the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival. In 1987 the University's music school was renamed the Lionel Hampton School of Music, the first and only university music school to be named for a jazz musician.
His wife Gladys was his manager throughout much of his career. Many musicians recall that Lionel ran the music and Gladys ran the business.
Hampton was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans.
Lionel Hampton died from congestive heart failure in New York City, and is interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York.
[edit] Music
During a 1930 recording date in the NBC studios in Los Angeles, Louis Armstrong discovered a vibraphone (similar to a xylophone, but with metal bars and a tremolo mechanism). He asked Hampton if he could play it. Hampton, who knew how to play the xylophone, tried it and they agreed to record a few records with Hamp on vibes. Hampton is credited with popularizing the vibraphone as a jazz instrument.
Those who played with Hampton's band at one time or another: Illinois Jacquet, Dexter Gordon, Ernie Royal, Jack McVea, Charlie Mingus, Monk Montgomery, Wes Montgomery, Quincy Jones, Benny Golson, Fats Navarro, Kenny Dorham, Clifford Brown, Dinah Washington, Betty Carter, Joe Williams, Arnett Cobb, Earl Bostic, and John Colianni.
Hampton was known for his tireless energy and skill on the vibes, drums, and two-fingered piano. The bars on the vibraphone are laid out like the piano; Hampton played both instruments in the same way. He also had a trademark on the drums of displaying acrobatics with his sticks. Sometimes he would juggle, flip and twirl as many as 5-6 drumsticks and still play without missing a beat.
Hampton's 1942 recording of "Flying Home" with Jacquet's famous honking tenor sax solo, later refined and expanded by Cobb in 1946, is sometimes deemed the first rock and roll record. Quincy Jones once stated that Hamp was like a rock and roll musician in that "Hamp would go for the throat every night and the people would freak out".
[edit] Samples
- Download sample of "I'll Never Be the Same" by Hampton and Buddy Rich
[edit] External Links
- Christopher Popa, "Lionel Hampton: Music Was His Fountain of Youth," Big Band Library [1]
- Lionel Hampton's Gravesite
