31 May 2022

Lionel Hampton – Phantom Dancer 31 May 2022

Greg Poppleton's Phantom Dancer swing jazz radio show

Lionel Hampton, this week’s Phantom Dancer feature artist, was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, and bandleader. He worked with jazz musicians from Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich, to Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Quincy Jones. In 1992, he was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. Lionel Hampton was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1996.

The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.

LISTEN to this week’s Phantom Dancer mix (online after 2pm AEST, Tuesday 31 May) and two years of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/

DRUMS

Lionel Hampton began his career playing drums for the Chicago Defender Newsboys’ Band (led by Major N. Clark Smith) while still a teenager in Chicago.

He moved to California in 1927 or 1928, playing drums for the Dixieland Blues-Blowers.

While he lived in Chicago, Hampton saw Louis Armstrong at the Vendome, remembering that the entire audience went crazy after his first solo.

He made his recording debut with The Quality Serenaders led by Paul Howard (which you’ll hear on this week’s Phantom Dancer), then left for Culver City and drummed for the Les Hite band at Sebastian’s Cotton Club.

One of his trademarks as a drummer was his ability to do stunts with multiple pairs of sticks such as twirling and juggling without missing a beat.

VIBRAPHONE

During this period, he began practicing on the vibraphone.

In 1930 Louis Armstrong came to California and hired the Les Hite band for performances and recordings. Armstrong was impressed with Hampton’s playing after Hampton reproduced Armstrong’s solo on the vibraphone and asked him to play behind him like that during vocal choruses.

So began his career as a vibraphonist, popularizing the use of the instrument in the process. Invented ten years earlier, the vibraphone is essentially a xylophone with metal bars, a sustain pedal, and resonators equipped with electric-powered fans that add tremolo.

While working with the Les Hite band, Hampton also occasionally did some performing with Nat Shilkret and his orchestra. During the early 1930s, he studied music at the University of Southern California. In 1934 he led his own orchestra, and then appeared in the Bing Crosby film Pennies From Heaven (1936) alongside Louis Armstrong (wearing a mask in a scene while playing drums).

In November 1936, the Benny Goodman Orchestra came to Los Angeles to play the Palomar Ballroom. When John Hammond brought Goodman to see Hampton perform, Goodman invited him to join his trio, which soon became the Benny Goodman Quartet with Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa completing the lineup.

The Trio and Quartet (which you’ll hear on this week’s Phantom Dancer) were among the first racially integrated jazz groups to perform before audiences and were a leading small-group of the day.

ORCHESTRA

In 1940 Hampton left the Goodman organization under amicable circumstances to form his own big band which you’ll hear in this week’s Phantom Dancer from two 1944 airchecks.

Hampton’s orchestra developed a high-profile during the 1940s and early 1950s.

His third recording with them in 1942 produced the version of “Flying Home”, featuring a solo by Illinois Jacquet that anticipated rhythm & blues.

Hampton was a featured artist at numerous Cavalcade of Jazz concerts held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles and produced by Leon Hefflin Sr.

The sixth Cavalcade of Jazz, June 25, 1950, precipitated the closest thing to a riot in the show’s eventful history. Lionel and his band paraded around the ball park’s infield playing ‘Flying High’. The huge crowd, around 14,000 went berserk, tossed cushions, coats, hats, programs, and just about anything else they could lay hands on and swarmed on the field.

Around 1945 or 1946, he handed a pair of vibraphone mallets to then-five year old Roy Ayers. Roy Ayres, composer and vibraphonist was seminal in the development of ‘acid jazz’ and is the Godfather of Neo Soul.

CHARITY

Hampton was deeply involved in the construction of various public housing projects, and founded the Lionel Hampton Development Corporation. Construction began with the Lionel Hampton Houses in Harlem, New York, in the 1960s, with the help of then Republican governor Nelson Rockefeller.

Hampton’s wife, Gladys Hampton, also was involved in construction of a housing project in her name, the Gladys Hampton Houses. Gladys died in 1971. In the 1980s, Hampton built another housing project called Hampton Hills in Newark, New Jersey.

In this final clip from the late 1940s, note the fender bass…

31 MAY PLAY LIST