LIONEL HAMPTON Vol.3
‘Hey Ba-Ba-Re-Bop’ Original Recordings 1941-1951
Although Lionel Hampton is best known for his
trailblazing work playing vibraphone with Benny
Goodman, equal credit should be given to his
success and staying power as a bandleader.
Beginning when he left Goodman in 1940,
Hampton outlasted every other big band leader of
the Swing Era, performing until shortly before his
death in 2002 at the age of 94. Almost as
important as his work as a bandleader was his
ability to spot and hire young talent for his
orchestra. The 1940s saw a veritable Who’s Who
of jazz legends pass through his organization,
including Dinah Washington, Betty Carter, Joe
Williams, Dexter Gordon, and Wes Montgomery.
Hampton would never have been a success
without the help of his wife and business manager,
Gladys. Gladys took care of the books, the
accounting, paying musicians, and even designing
their attire, leaving Lionel to concentrate on his
performing, songwriting, and arranging. It was
Gladys who convinced Hampton to go out on his
own after he had been with Benny Goodman for
four years. In the fall of 1940 their plans took
shape, with Hampton moving to Los Angeles to
organize his band.
Gladys had realized that in addition to not
having to compete with the likes of Duke Ellington,
Cab Calloway and Count Basie in New York, they
could also get away with paying less in salaries for
young West Coast musicians. This turned out to
be a brilliant move, for Hampton found a
seemingly endless array of talented youngsters
eager to get a break in the music business.
Rehearsing at the Club Alabam on Central Avenue,
Hampton would further the careers of trumpet
players Ernie Royal and Joe Newman, saxophonists
Dexter Gordon and Illinois Jacquet, pianist Milt
Buckner, and guitarist Irving Ashby.
By the end of 1941, Gladys had secured a
recording contract for Lionel with Decca Records,
and the band had its first session on Christmas
Eve, producing a supercharged version of Nola, a
warhorse written in 1916. Unfortunately, Hampton
would have few chances to record before James C.
Petrillo’s AFM strike paralyzed the recording
industry the following July (he was able to wax his
famous version of “Flying Home”). Hampton lost
many of his key musicians to the draft, but kept the
band going. Gladys booked the group on tours
throughout the country, including some harrowing
trips into the South. The band grew, with
Hampton adding two singers (Rubel Blakely and
Madeline Green) and comedian Slappy White.
One night in Chicago in 1943, Joe Glaser,
Hampton’s booking agent, told Lionel about a
young girl singer performing at Garrick’s Show Bar,
a club frequented by sailors coming ashore from
work on Lake Michigan. The singer, Ruth Jones,
sang “Sweet Georgia Brown” and impressed
Hampton so much that after the show, he went
backstage and hired her on the spot, changing her
name to Dinah Washington, a name that had come
to him on the spur of the moment. Later that
year, Hampton met songwriter Leonard Feather,
who had written some blues songs especially for
Dinah to sing. In December, Hampton backed
Dinah with a sextet for Keynote Records, a small
independent label in New York. Two of the songs,
I Know How To Do It (featuring Hampton on
drums) and Homeward Bound are included on
this CD. The latter featured Hampton playing the
treble notes in a piano duet with Milt Buckner.
However, the Keynote recordings (which had been
done without Gladys’ knowledge) violated
Hampton’s contract with Decca, resulting in a legal
quagmire that did not get settled until 1945.
Hampton returned to the Decca studios in
March 1944 with his big band, which now was
reflecting a subtle change in swing’s direction, from
the relatively staid, predictable approach of the war
years to a quirkier sound, heavy on the back beat
with elements of jump and bebop creeping in.
Songs like Loose Wig and Chop-Chop (with cowriting
credit going to Gladys Neal, his wife’s name
from a previous marriage) reflected this change,
which was made to appeal more to black audiences.
Hampton said in his 1989 autobiography, ‘I stayed
in the black groove. You’d know my band was
black just from listening to it. The crossover to the
white audience hadn’t happened yet’.
As the 1940s progressed, Lionel Hampton kept
his music exciting by infusing his swing with blues,
Count Basie-style riffs, and boogie-woogie. Midway
through 1945, Hampton hired saxophonist Herbie
Fields, the first white musician in his band.
According to Hampton, ‘When we performed on
stage, he wore makeup to darken his face so he
didn’t stand out so much. It was still unusual to
have an integrated band.’ Fields’ sensational
clarinet solo on Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop made him a
star and he would leave Hampton the next year to
form his own band. Hampton got his inspiration
for the song from a Helen Humes record, “Be-Ba-
Be-Le-Ba,” which had been recorded for Philo
earlier in the year.
In May 1945, Dinah Washington cut another
Leonard Feather blues, Blow-Top Blues, which
became her biggest hit yet. Despite being with the
band for three years, Dinah wasn’t happy about
the infrequency of her vocals, so despite having her
salary raised from $75 per week to $125, she left
the group in the fall.
Perhaps harkening back to the exciting times of
the Benny Goodman Quartet, Hampton recorded
a brief session with a quartet, featuring pianist Dan
Burley, guitarist Billy Mackel, bassist Charlie Harris,
and drummer George Jenkins. We’ve included
three superb tracks from this session: the driving
Chord-A-Re-Bop, Hamp’s Salty Blues, and
Limehouse Blues, the latter a throwback from the
Goodman years.
Alto saxophonist Ben Kynard’s Reminiscing
Mood shows Hampton using unconventional
chords found in records by Dizzy Gillespie and Stan
Kenton. A sure sign that Hamp was heading in a
bebop direction was in his 1947 recording of the
bebop anthem, How High The Moon, again with a
quartet backing him up (listen for quotes from
several bebop classics, including “Groovin’ High”,
whose chords are based on “How High the Moon”,
and Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology”). Later that
year, Hampton recorded his own soon-to-be
bebop classic, Midnight Sun, in an arrangement by
Sonny Burke.
In 1948, Hampton discovered a vocalist to
replace Dinah Washington, and one who could
sing bebop as well. Betty Carter was then an
aspiring eighteen-year-old singer from Flint,
Michigan named Lorene Carter who had sat in with
Charlie Parker and other bebop musicians.
Hampton hired her and nicknamed her ‘Betty
Bebop’. Betty Carter recalled, ‘Hamp used to ask
me which band I liked better, his or Dizzy’s. I
would say Dizzy’s and he’d fire me. Gladys
Hampton loved my work and had a funny feeling
that I might do something. Every time he’d fire me,
she’d rehire me. He fired me seven times and I
stayed with the band two-and-a-half years.’
Hampton’s last session for Decca came in
1949, with his cover of the western swing hit, Rag
Mop. After this came a label switch to MGM, for
whom Hamp continued his strides into R&B and
even attempts at early rock and roll. It showed
that through the years, Lionel Hampton could glide
effortlessly from genre to genre, still retaining the
genius that made him a jazz legend in every era in
which he played.
Cary Ginell – a winner of the 2004 ASCAP/Deems
Taylor Award for music journalism