A Room-Filling Sound

Like other American autobiography, jazz improvisation reveals the tensions between the private and the public man. Here we have the legendary Lionel Hampton striding six decades of the beat in small group and big band jazz. The first black to break the color barrier in a white band, Hampton exploded on the national scene as a major soloist with the Benny Goodman Quartet in the mid-30s. But, proficient at the piano as well as on drums and vibes, Hampton had already played with Armstrong, appeared in movies, and fronted his own band in Hollywood.

Moving on from the Goodman years, Hamp created an exciting series of bands throughout the '40s, integrating and educating a variety of now-veteran bop musicians into what were basically house arrangements for showcasing individual styles. Boppers Gillespie, Clifford Brown, Dexter Gordon, Art Farmer, and Dinah Washington all paid their dues in his road groups and were exposed to a larger-than-life, expansive psyche and a room-filling sound that had extrovert written all over it.

The problem with this man is his own public image. Like Ben Franklin, he is always out for public review, relishes his audience, and advises them with his own playing that the best jazz is melodic, joyous, and rhythm-driven. Avid purists who believe that anguish and the blues are synonymous admire Hampton for his generosity in sharing his success with others, but dismiss his playing as superficial pyrotechnics, all glitter but no substance. As with Franklin in his autobiography, they ask where the real Lionel Hampton is in all this upbeat, brittle mallet-wielding artifice. How can we separate the artist from the businessman when Hampton is so willing to meet us with a deeply listenable music, so easy to follow in line and composition? Where is the private soul that suffered the indignities of racism in this riff-ridden stuff of dancing feet and moving bodies?

But then there are those among us who believe that life is inherently social. The suggestion is that Hampton is one of these. Why should he be deemed superfluous because he refuses to bare his angst before us, lingering over his vibes as a broken man might do over his cups? Relish his music for its sociability, and the discovery is that there is a dialogue-like aspect worthy of the best historian.

I refer here to the extended solo on “Someday My Prince Will Come." Unlike Miles Davis' version, where the plaintiveness leans towards the self-indulgent, Hamp invites us to a rehearsal of a point-counterpoint set of eight-bar riffs which has him playing swing inventions against complicated cascades of notes characteristic of the phrasing of a later period. Again, to use the Franklin analogy, Hampton is not so interested in introducing us to himself as he is to himself in the context of all those colleagues he has taught and who have taught us. This album is a tribute to the sociability of jazz, placing the communal element in sharp focus.

As for those who long for subtlety, listen for it in unexpected places. The opening cut, “Bye Bye Blues,” not known as a tune of sophistication, is made so by Hamp's sustaining the first two notes of the chorus and dropping a whole series of riffs underneath them, which has the effect of slowing the tempo while supercharging it at the same time. The real kicker on this album, however, is "Mostly Blues," where Hamp lets his guitarist, Joe Beck, set us up in a smoke-filled room while he plays quietly in the background; then he comes clean in an introspectively image-filled solo that assures us there is time for reflection in even the busiest life. As they say in the trade: "Here's to the man who makes it all happen."