Lionel Hampton

NEW YORK (AP) – Lionel Hampton, the vibraphone virtuoso and standout showman whose six-decade career ranked him among the greatest names in jazz history, died Saturday. He was 94.

Hampton, whose health was failing in recent years, died of heart failure at Mount Sinai Medical Center at about 6:15 a.m., said his manager, Phil Leshin.

“He was really a towering jazz figure,” said saxophonist Sonny Rollins, who played with Hampton in the 1950s. “He really personifed the spirit of jazz because he had so much joy about his playing.”

Hampton worked with a who's who of jazz greats, from Benny Goodman to Charlie Parker to Quincy Jones.

Hampton and pianist Teddy Wilson were the black half of the fabled quartet with Goodman and drummer Gene Krupa that in 1936 broke the racial barriers that had largely kept black musicians from performing with whites in public.

Wilson had recorded with Goodman and Krupa previously, and white soloists “jammed” informally with black groups, but a color line was drawn when a white band was on stage.

Later, Hampton's bands traveled the globe as musical ambassadors from America. They also were hothouses or showcases for such greats as Jones, Parker, Charlie Mingus, Illinois Jacquet, Dexter Gordon, Earl Bostic, Fats Novarro, Joe Williams and Dinah Washington.

Hampton's music was melodic and swinging, but audiences also responded to his electric personality – the big smile, energy and bounce that contributed to his skillful showmanship. When not swinging on the vibes, he drummed, sang and played his own peculiar style of piano, using two fingers as if they were vibraphone mallets.

“When I was a kid, I always wanted to put on a show,” he once said. “I always liked to be taking bows.”

Originally a drummer, Hampton caught on with Les Hite's band after high school and followed Hite to Los Angeles.

The event that put Hampton together with the vibraphone, or vibraharp as it is sometimes known, was a 1930 recording session in Culver City in which Hite's band was backing up Louis Armstrong.

“There was a set of vibes in the corner,” Hampton recalled. “Louis said, `Do you know how to play it?”

Hampton said he had fooled around with a somewhat similar instrument, the xylophone, when he was growing up. After about 45 minutes of noodling on the vibraphone, he felt sure enough of himself to swing in behind Armstrong on “Memories of You.” He played vibes while Armstrong sang and drummed when Armstrong played trumpet.

The vibraphone and Hampton had arrived as forces to be reckoned with in jazz.

After touring with his own band along the Pacific Coast, Hampton settled in at the Paradise Nightclub in Los Angeles, where in August 1936 Goodman came around to hear him play.

Three months later, Hampton was in the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York, starting out “four gorgeous years with Benny” in the new, trailblazing Benny Goodman Quartet.

Hampton's most famous composition, “Flying Home,” dates from this time. He estimated that he played it 300 times a year in the half century after writing it in 1937.

He took to the road with his own orchestra in 1940 and built bookings into the million-dollar-a-year range. After the big-band era died, Hampton pared down to around eight players that he called the Inner Circle, although he put bigger groups together for international tours.

Hampton regularly turned up at colleges and major jazz festivals in addition to touring abroad. He also made guest appearances on numerous television variety shows and recorded scores of jazz albums and singles.

A Republican Party stalwart, Hampton appeared at fund-raising and celebratory party events, but played the White House during Democratic administrations too, performing over the years for Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Bush.

He was back in Washington in January 1997 as a recipient of the National Medal of the Arts. President Clinton hailed him as “more than just a performer. He is a lion of American music. And he still makes the vibraphone sing.”

Both the year and place of Hampton's birth were a matter of dispute over the years. Hampton did not have a copy of his birth certificate, a circumstance not unusual for those born at that time.

The birth date listed on Hampton's passport was April 20, 1908, although various references have listed him as much as six years younger.

There also was disagreement about his birthplace, with many saying he was born in Louisville, Ky. But Hampton's manager, Bill Titone, said he was born in Birmingham, Ala. He was raised by his maternal grandmother after his father was declared missing in action in World War I.

For a time, he attended a Roman Catholic grade school in Kenosha, Wis., where a nun taught him to play snare drum and twirl the sticks.

In Chicago, the teen-age Hampton got a job hawking the Chicago Defender and soon was playing drums in the black newspaper's newsboy jazz band.

Over the years, Hampton established various personal philanthropies, including an ear research foundation and a college scholarship endowment fund. The University of Idaho's music school is named for Hampton.

He also established a community development corporation which, with government support, built low- and middle-income housing in New York and Newark, N.J. One of his projects in Harlem was named for his wife, Gladys, who died in 1971 after a 35-year marriage.

His wife also was his manager. The couple had no children.

Hampton served on the New York City Human Right Commission and in 1985 was appointed “ambassador of music” to the United Nations.

Raised a Roman Catholic, he later embraced Christian Science and was a Mason for more than half a century. He also was powerfully influenced by the State of Israel, where he performed and which inspired his “King David Suite,” the 1953 four-part jazz composition for symphony orchestra.


Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press