Lionel Hampton, whose profession embodied the swing age of jazz, was an enormous determine in American music, not solely as a flamboyant bandleader and stage entertainer, but in addition as a pioneering determine in rock ‘n’ roll. (His 1942 recording “Flying Home,” featured a pulsating saxophone solo by Illinois Jacquet that set the driving tone for later rock information.) Hampton, who performed piano and drums, additionally gave the vibraphone a long-lasting place on the jazz bandstand after his ground-breaking recordings with Louis Armstrong in 1930. In brief, it’s exhausting to overstate Hampton’s significance, which is why the Grammys, in recognition of his monumental contribution to music, awarded him a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award in April 2021.
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Lionel Hampton, music pioneer
Lionel Hampton’s rhythmically subtle vibraphone performances influenced a technology of future gamers, together with Milt Jackson and Bobby Hutcherson. Hampton, who was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 20, 1908, performed with Louis Armstrong on a number of recordings in 1930. Throughout a break of their session, the pair got here throughout what Hampton later known as a “vibraharp,” in a facet room. Trumpeter Armstrong requested Hampton if he might play it. Hampton, who mentioned he thought the keyboard was just like that of a xylophone, which he had studied in Chicago, pulled the instrument into the studio, plugged it in, and performed a solo that he had memorized from Armstrong’s file “Cornet Chop Suey.” Armstrong was shocked by the sound and requested Hampton to play the instrument on the Eubie Blake music “Memories of You.” It was, based on most jazz historians, the primary time the vibraharp was used on a serious jazz recording.
Hampton’s melodic expertise made him a sought-after session musician all through his profession. In 1936, he performed in a powerful quartet with clarinet maestro Benny Goodman, pianist Teddy Wilson, and drummer Gene Krupa. Collectively, they created a few of the basic small-band swing period recordings, and their group was a famous and pioneering instance of racial mixing in an period of segregation: no one had ever traveled with an built-in band earlier than. “Hampton had a tremendous sense of rhythm, and he transferred that to the vibes,” remarked Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute for Jazz Research at Rutgers College. “He could really swing, and that’s what captured Benny Goodman. Hampton had a great ear and could improvise.” Among the many quartet’s fantastic recordings is a model of the jazz basic “Moonglow.”
Three years later, when the vibraphonist was touring with Goodman’s band, Hampton was nervous about having to fly from Los Angeles to Atlantic Metropolis, the primary time he had been on a aircraft. He started whistling a melody to maintain his thoughts off the upcoming flight. When Goodman requested him what it was, Hampton replied, “I don’t know. We can call it ‘Flying Home,’ I guess.” This swing anthem later turned one in all his showstopping theme tunes. Throughout one frantic rendition at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, the viewers’s stomping prompted the balcony to crack. Hampton’s fevered 1942 recording of “Flying Home” for Decca Data is considered a precursor to rock ‘n’ roll. The file additionally had an enormous affect on younger musicians, together with Ornette Coleman, who mentioned it was his favourite tune as a younger jazz fan.
The inspirational bandleader
“I cut my teeth writing arrangements for Lionel Hampton, and there was no better school in the world than the Lionel Hampton Orchestra,” mentioned Quincy Jones, who first labored for Hampton on the age of 15. “Hamp was the consummate jazz artist, he taught me how to groove,” added Jones, who was significantly keen on Hampton’s fantastic model of “September in the Rain.”
When Hampton launched his personal orchestra in 1940, it quickly turned a touring academy for a few of the best jazz stars of the twentieth century. The musicians Hampton introduced in included trumpeter Clifford Brown, saxophonist Dexter Gordon, and singers Dinah Washington and Betty Carter. Hampton took younger vocalist Washington beneath his wing – persuading her to vary her identify from Ruth Jones – and their advantageous work collectively was captured in a Carnegie Corridor recording for Decca Data, together with the observe “Evil Gal Blues.” “Lionel Hampton taught me the value of showmanship. With his band I learned what this business is about,” Washington remarked years later.
One other protegee was guitarist Wes Montgomery, who recorded with Hampton on the 1949 music “New Central Avenue Breakdown.” On the time, Hampton’s orchestra was gaining reputation and his model of “Rag Mop” broke into the Billboard prime 100 chart in February 1950. Milt Jackson mentioned that one in all Hampton’s key qualities was the “inspirational way he played in front of a band.” He additionally knew find out how to decide good sidemen, recording alongside saxophonists Stan Getz and Coleman Hawkins, pianist Chick Corea, and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.
This trait of having the ability to establish the proper musical companions continued all through his profession. In October 1964, he recorded the album You Higher Know It!!! for the Status/Impulse label. It featured Ben Webster on tenor saxophone and included a scintillating model of Duke Ellington’s “Ring Dem Bells,” a music that confirmed off Hampton’s singing and scatting expertise. Hampton’s contribution to music was later acknowledged by the College of Idaho, whose faculty of music is known as after the vibes grasp, the primary college music faculty to honor a jazz musician in such a method.
A gifted composer
Lionel Hampton discovered rhythm and composition concept when he was rising up in Chicago within the Twenties, understanding scales and harmonic extensions that will be a key a part of his songwriting work in later years. Amongst his most interesting compositions are “Red Top” – co-written with Ben Kynard – a shocking cowl model of which seems on Erroll Garner’s Live performance by the Sea. One other Hampton basic is “Hamp’s Boogie Woogie,” which he reduce with acclaimed bass participant Ray Brown and pianist Oscar Peterson.
Hampton, guided by his shrewd enterprise companion and spouse Gladys, was intelligent in his alternative of high-impact preparations, music loaded with brass and blues solos. The high-energy songs happy a post-war viewers’s starvation for leisure. His catchy music “Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop,” launched in January 1946 and that includes Herbie Fields on alto saxophone, went to No. 1 on the R&B JukeBox chart for 16 weeks. Different memorable Hampton compositions embrace “Midnight Sun” – a favourite of organ nice Jimmy Smith – and his four-part symphonic jazz work “King David Suite,” impressed by a go to to Israel. A movie was fabricated from his efficiency of the suite with the St. Petersburg State Orchestra.
The charismatic entertainer
Lionel Hampton’s vibrant character made him a pure for Hollywood and the musician appeared in seven main motion pictures, together with Pennies from Heaven alongside Bing Crosby. He additionally appeared with Little Richard within the 1957 image Mister Rock and Roll. Celebrated jazz drummer Roy Brooks, who noticed Hampton in live performance in 1938, described the star in motion. “He may be the only drummer I’ve seen dance on a drum…. He’d do a jig on a tom tom drum, sometimes he’d fall through and jump up out. He was really something.”
Hampton laughed off criticism of his act, saying that his antics have been ultimately imitated. “They used to say, ‘here comes the circus.’ And now all of them do it. All that jive came from us,” he informed DownBeat journal within the Nineteen Seventies. He was a born showman, whether or not on signature tunes similar to “Jivin’ the Vibes” or together with his memorable solo improvisations on the ballad “Stardust.” Hampton might deliver his personal character to no matter music he coated, together with his 1955 recording on the Schola Cantorum, Paris, for his album Lionel Hampton and His French New Sound Vol. 1. The album features a candy model of “Crazy Rhythm,” that includes the well-known singer Sacha Distel on guitar.
Hampton was versatile, too, and his glorious drumming underpins “Chasin’ with Chase.” He liked utilizing drumsticks and mentioned as soon as, “it seemed to me that drumming was the best way to get close to God.” His frenetic stage persona – that includes a large smile as mallets flew and sweat poured from his forehead – was nonetheless evident after I noticed him play in London in 1979, although he was in his 70s by then. A spotlight was the music on which he performed a frantic piano solo utilizing simply two fingers. Hampton saved taking part in up till his loss of life at 94 on August 31, 2002.
Lionel Hampton, an imaginative interpreter of basic songs
Lionel Hampton’s melodic and harmonic creativeness was extraordinary, permitting him to deliver his personal contemporary interpretations to a rating of jazz classics, together with “Dinah,” “How High the Moon” and “Honeysuckle Rose.” Considered one of his most haunting interpretations is “I Cover the Waterfront.” Hampton performed on a model of the music within the Nineteen Forties, when his orchestra accompanied Billie Vacation at New York’s Majestic Theatre. It was a tune that Hampton returned to repeatedly, together with a putting model for Decca Data.
Hampton made his mark throughout a time when prejudice was a serious impediment for Black musicians in American life. Even on the peak of his fame, he was informed by a door attendant at The Ed Sullivan Present to enter as soon as the lights have been dimmed so the white viewers wouldn’t “be offended” by seeing black individuals within the viewers. In late life, Hampton would inform youthful Black musicians about his difficulties touring the south within the Nineteen Thirties with Goodman’s band. He was proud to have taken his music on excursions of Africa and was delighted to play alongside President Clinton in 1997 at a particular live performance the place Hampton was offered with the Nationwide Medal of Arts. “I want to be remembered for spreading happiness and goodwill,” he mentioned.
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