another kool legend passes--Lionel Hampton. This dood gets regular play at lostacres
Jazz Great Lionel Hampton Popularized the 'Vibes'
Sat Aug 31, 3:23 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lionel Hampton, who died on Saturday at 94, was one of America's jazz legends, pioneering and popularizing the vibraphone and teaming up with a long list of jazz greats over a musical career that spanned six decades.
Hampton, who played with other jazz icons from Benny Goodman to Quincy Jones throughout a musical career that began in the 1920s, died from heart failure at New York's Mount Sinai Medical Center.
First a jazz drummer, Hampton was at a recording session with legendary trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong in Los Angeles in the early 1930s when he first saw a vibraphone, also called a vibraharp or the vibes, sitting in the corner.
"I'd heard about it, seen it, but just hadn't gotten around to trying it out," Hampton recalled in his autobiography. "Louis said, 'Can you play it?' I said, 'Sure."'
Hampton did, playing one of Armstrong's solos note for note. "And boy, he fell for it," Hampton recalled.
Since then, thanks to Hampton, the vibraphone -- an instrument with metal keys, played with soft mallets and producing a gently vibrating tone from motor-driven rotating discs under each key -- has become a jazz staple.
Born on April 20, 1908, in Louisville, Kentucky, Hampton over his long career wrote more than 200 pieces of music, including the jazz standards "Flying Home," "Evil Gal Blues" and "Midnight Sun."
In the budding years of his career, Hampton was also famous for helping to bridge the racial gap between blacks and whites in jazz music.
In the 1930s, Hampton joined drummer Gene Krupa and pianist Teddy Wilson in the famous multiracial Benny Goodman quartet. Later, Hampton played a prominent role in Goodman's big band, working on several recording sessions and tours until 1940 when Hampton organized his own permanent orchestra.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Hampton enjoyed immense success with a series of recordings and all-star bands. He had a part in the movie "The Benny Goodman Story" in 1955 and later toured in Israel, Europe, North Africa and Australia.
STRIKING A PHILANTHROPIC NOTE
With business guidance from his wife, Gladys, who died in 1971, Hampton amassed a comfortable fortune over decades of performing. He endowed scholarships and music schools and even erected low- and middle-income housing in Harlem.
When Gladys died of a heart attack in 1971, Hampton lost not only a wife but a companion who, he said, made all of his major decisions from the day they met until the day she died.
Hampton then turned to philanthropy and in December of that year turned the first shovelful of dirt for the Lionel Hampton Houses -- a $13 million complex of 355 apartments for low- and moderate-income families and the elderly on Eighth Avenue and 131st Street in New York's Harlem. Down the block were the Gladys Hampton Houses -- 205 units for low-income people.
Hampton also set up scholarships at the University of Southern California and Duke University, among other schools. He endowed an annual jazz festival at the University of Idaho and in 1987 the institution named its music school after him.
When Hampton was just a boy, his father Charles, a pianist and singer, enlisted in World War One and was declared missing in action. Years later, after Hampton became a well-known musician, he found his father alive in a Veterans' Administration hospital in Dayton, Ohio.
Hampton's musical career began in Chicago, behind the bass drum in the Chicago Defender's Newsboys Band before moving onto the snare. Hampton then went to Hollywood in 1928 to play with his friend Les Hite. Hampton's big breakthrough came soon afterward, when Hite's band, with Hampton on drums, was hired as the house orchestra for Frank Sebastian's Cotton Club.
The band backed Louis Armstrong when he performed there, and not long after, Hampton's career as "King of the Vibes" took off.
Active in politics and a supporter of the Republican Party, Hampton has played for American presidents from Harry Truman to George Bush, Sr., and traveled the globe. In 1985, Hampton was given the title "ambassador of music" to the United Nations ( news - web sites) and also served on the New York City Human Rights Commission.
Hampton kept to an ambitious schedule of performances well into his 80s. In 1996, at the age of 88, Hampton was a headliner for the New Orleans Jazz Heritage Festival.
In January 1997, Hampton received the National Medal of the Arts from President Bill Clinton.
In recent years, Hampton had been in poor health. He had no children. |
