A birthday tribute to jazz icon Slide Hampton

Our celebration of Jazz Appreciation Month 2024 honors musicians who had been born in April whereas highlighting the contributions made to jazz by Duke Ellington. This week, let’s pay tribute to trombonist, composer, and arranger Locksley Wellington “Slide” Hampton, who was born on April 21, 1932, in Pennsylvania.

In case you missed it, try our JAM kickoff and Duke Ellington retrospective right here: Black Music Sunday: It is Jazz Appreciation Month!

”Black Music Sunday” is a weekly sequence highlighting all issues Black music, with over 200 tales protecting performers, genres, historical past, and extra, every that includes its personal vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll discover some acquainted tunes and maybe an introduction to one thing new.

It’s straightforward to affiliate trombones with the nice Traditionally Black Faculties and Universities marching bands—which we coated right here in 2021’s “Prepare for the battle of the ‘bones!” However the trombone has additionally had an extended and honored historical past within the growth of jazz.

Musician and jazz author Steven Cerra takes a deep dive into that historical past for Jazz Profiles. He quotes Gunther Schuller’s essay, “The Trombone in Jazz,” initially printed in 2000’s “The Oxford Companion to Jazz.”

Late nineteenth-century ragtime ensembles, the live performance bands prevalent everywhere in the United States and the Americas, and particularly the brass and parade bands so fashionable in New Orleans across the flip of the century all featured the trombone in a wide range of musical features, starting from soloistic to accompanimental, from particular person to ensem­ble roles.Thus it can’t come as a shock that within the earliest man­ifestation of jazz (i.e., the New Orleans collective ensemble model) the trombone was a preeminent, indispensable member of the so-called three-instrument entrance line: cornet (or trumpet), clarinet, and trom­bone.

With that in thoughts, let’s flip again to Slide Hampton. Jazz critic Martin Johnson wrote an in depth biography of Hampton for jazz station WBGO-FM when the trombonist joined the ancestors in November 2021.

He had 11 siblings, and his musician dad and mom had every study an instrument, making a household combo that went on tour. He later recalled that by means of a content material run by the Pittsburgh Courier, the Hampton household band’s first correct efficiency was at Carnegie Corridor; they opened for vibraphonist Lionel Hampton (no relation).

As a baby, Hampton excelled on the trombone although he was given a left-handed instrument, and he was naturally a righty. He continued to play left-handed all through his distinguished profession — selecting up his self-explanatory nickname, Slide, early on. After his household relocated to Indianapolis, Hampton attended Crispus Attucks Excessive College, the identical college as trombone greats David Baker and J. J. Johnson. His profession hit the quick monitor virtually as quickly as he graduated. He performed and organized for Maynard Ferguson’s huge band within the late Nineteen Fifties, and caught a giant break in ‘58 enjoying alongside trombone nice Melba Liston on her lone solo album, Melba Liston and Her ‘Bones.

From there, Hampton labored with drummers Artwork Blakey, Max Roach and Mel Lewis; pianists Tadd Dameron and Barry Harris; and trumpeter Thad Jones, amongst many others. Talking with David Brent Johnson of Indiana Public Media for a 2007 program referred to as Slide at 75, he stated he’d been influenced particularly by the editions of Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with a three-horn entrance line. That mix led him to prepare his horn traces in separate registers, creating the phantasm of immensity. It’s evident on “Newport,” a chunk from an early Hampton recording, Two Sides of Slide.

All About Jazz continues Hampton’s story.                                         

From 1964 to 1967, he served as music director for numerous orchestras and artists. Then, following a 1968 tour with Woody Herman, he elected to remain in Europe, performing with different expatriates resembling Benny Bailey, Kenny Clarke, Kenny Drew, Artwork Farmer, and Dexter Gordon. Upon returning to the U.S. in 1977, he started a sequence of grasp lessons at Harvard, the College of Massachusetts at Amherst, De Paul College in Chicago, and Indiana College. Throughout this era he fashioned the illustrious World of Trombones: an ensemble of 9 trombones and a rhythm part.

Slide Hampton’s numerous collaborations with probably the most distinguished musicians of jazz had been acknowledged by the 1998 Grammy Award for Greatest Jazz Association with a Vocalist.

Hampton’s first Grammy was for his association of Duke Ellington’s “Cotton Tail,” which Jazz vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater recorded on her tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, “Expensive Ella,” in 1997. 

Give it a hear:

Right here’s one other style of Hampton enjoying Ellington, on his octet’s 1960 ”Sister Salvation” album, performing  Ellington’s “Simply Squeeze Me (However Don’t Tease Me).”

Any trombonists or trombone aficionados should try Hampton’s solo at Dizzy Gillespie’s seventieth Birthday Celebration. The video under is cued to it.

And Hampton was given a birthday tribute of his personal in 2017, when he turned 85. 

Jazz trombonist Dion Tucker’s “The Chops Store” YouTube channel is a superb place for horn gamers to go to. Hampton is one in every of Tucker’s musical hero-mentors, and Tucker shares insights into Hampton’s music and a group of pictures he took of Hampton on this 17-minute video:

Hampton was named a Nationwide Endowment for the Arts Jazz Grasp in 2005. This wide-ranging interview with him, performed by Molly Murphy for the NEA in 2007, is value a full learn:

Q: Whenever you had been growing your sound, what did you wish to sound like? How has that advanced over time?

Slide Hampton: After I was arising, the large bands had been very talked-about. We had been going to as a lot of these huge band performances that got here to Indianapolis as potential. A whole lot of music got here by means of Indianapolis and performed in any respect the completely different venues there — Tommy Dorsey got here, Glen Miller got here, Rely Basie, Billy Eckstine, Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton. So I used to be listening to a whole lot of nice trombone gamers as a result of there have been many, many trombone gamers that had been very talked-about at the moment. Trombone turned form of an unpopular instrument later. However at the moment, a few of the most vital bands had been led by trombone gamers.

Q: What do you imply it turned unpopular later?

Slide Hampton: Within the ’60s they did not use trombones in recordings as a result of it was pop music. Most recordings did not use the trombone. They could use the trumpet, they typically used the saxophone. However the trombone was very seldom used. What was occurring was this. Within the huge band interval, after all, you had anyplace from 12 to 17 musicians enjoying. And when the bookers began to search out out that they might guide teams that had been smaller, and the transportation, lodges, and all the things else would value much less, they began utilizing fewer musicians — as a result of they might. And that is what occurred and it began to get to the place that generally you did not have all of the devices that had been often within the huge bands.

[…]

Q: I might think about you listened to different trombonists whenever you had been growing your sound, I do know you definitely got here into contact with J.J. Johnson. Was he one in every of your influences?

Slide Hampton: J.J. was born in Indianapolis and raised there. I used to be born in Jeannette, Pennsylvania, however raised in Indianapolis. So J.J. was a giant affect to us.

Q: However he had already left by the point that you simply obtained there.

Slide Hampton: He was on the highway, however he was coming again infrequently. I truly heard him play in Indianapolis with the teams that he was enjoying with when he was staying there. He was a giant affect on us, however so was Trummy Younger. And, after all, we had been listening to Tommy Dorsey and Jack Teagarden and a whole lot of nice trombone gamers. There have been a large number of good trombone gamers. One other of my huge influences was Curtis Fuller. Curtis was one of many musicians that performed very well at a really younger age. There are some musicians who study a lot faster than all people else. Curtis was one in every of them. Lee Morgan was one in every of them. These guys performed on the age that almost all guys should not actually capable of be knowledgeable musician, so far as improvisation is anxious. There have been simply sure people who had been capable of play at a younger age, actually play the compositions and perceive the concord, know the compositions, and capable of interpret the idea of improvisation with these compositions.

I had no concept what a “bevy of bones” would sound like, till I heard Hampton’s album that includes 9 of them! Hampton’s World of Trombones group was reviewed in The New York Instances in 1982, by John S. Wilson.

THE glories of the trombone are being extolled and demonstrated this weekend at Seventh Avenue South by Slide Hampton, a left-handed trombonist, who’s main a gaggle referred to as the World of Trombones, an ensemble of 9 trombones backed by a four-man rhythm part.

”The trombone,” Mr. Hampton was saying with emphasis on the finish of a rehearsal the opposite day, ”contributes greater than most different devices to the expansion of a human being. A trombonist would not have the potential of utilizing the power of his instrument to make his level. There isn’t any excessive trombone shock, like a excessive trumpet shock. It has to make use of the great thing about its sound to make a degree.

”Taking part in a trombone makes you notice that you’ll need to rely on different individuals,” Mr. Hampton went on. ”If you are going to need assistance, you may’t abuse different individuals. That is why there’s an actual sense of fellowship amongst trombonists.”

Mr. Hampton’s fellowship is made up of Bennie Powell, Gregory Royal, Robin Eubanks, Clifton Anderson, Bob Trowers, Conrad Herwig and Mr. Hampton on tenor trombones and Doug Purviance and Garfield Fobb enjoying bass trombone.

Right here’s “’Spherical Midnight” from the “World of Trombones” album.

In 2003, greater than 20 years after “World of Trombones,” Hampton launched one other trombone feast. Jack Bowers reviewed “Spirit of the Horn” for All That Jazz.

That is wall-to-wall ‘bones, as Slide leads a dozen of the nation’s best by means of their paces and welcomes visitor soloist Invoice Watrous on Ray Noble’s “Cherokee,” Billy Strayhorn’s “A Flower Is a Lovesome Factor” and his personal “Blues for Eric.”

I’ll shut with “Blues for Eric” from that album.

Please be part of me within the feedback for much more from Slide Hampton, and extra bones!

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