First Person: Charlie Hampton
MY FATHER HAD A NIGHTCLUB in Greenville, North Carolina. It was called the Burnie Street Hall, and it was down by the high school. My father played piano and had a band — Hamp’s Jam Session, that’s what he called it.
I started picking up the piano when I was seven or eight years old. My father showed me a few licks, but I kind of learned on my own. I played what was popular at the time, you know — “A Tisket, a Tasket, I Lost My Yellow Basket.” I was playing that stuff when I was in the third grade.
Then I started playing alto saxophone because I liked Charlie Parker. My dad bought me a horn, an alto, when I was about twelve. I’ll never forget that silver alto; it was a Vega. I’d play it at night out in the street.
I was sixteen or seventeen when I sarted playing in my father’s band. There were two other altos in the band; that’s how I learned. They had some bad boys. There was this postman who played a real nice alto, but my father didn’t like him and didn’t want me taking lessons from him. I don’t know what the grudge was, but that guy sure sounded like Charlie Parker. Still, though, we would jam, play a couple of tunes. He used to say that I had a big, big sound.
The alto player told me what records to get, so I ordered all this stuff. Miles, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie. I could play exactly from memorization. If Parker played something like wee-duh-lee-doo, doo-duh-lee-doo-duh-lee, I could do that. But it wasn’t so much Charlie Parker then. I listened to the Prez. You got to listen to the Prez. There was something about Lester Young, you know — he was like the top musician at that time. Prez, holding his horn up like it was a flute. Most hip musicians, you know, say “horn.” And Johnny Hodges, who was in Duke Ellington’s band. And Willie Smith.
I had a scholarship to go to Carolina State College in Greenville, and I also had a scholarship to go to Howard University. I decided to go to Howard, but when I got there, I found out that the man who’d promised me the scholarship had just resigned, and they told me that I d have to pay my own way. So my father and my grandmother sent me some money to get me started.’
I started playing clarinet at Howard. In that music school, if you played a reed instrument, you played clarinet. “You can’t major in no saxophone,” they told me. “The saxophone is a bastard instrument — it’s out there by itself. But clarinet, you can get those beautiful trills, and the sound of a violin, the range of the violin!” So I always had my clarinet in my hand with my books. That’s all they cared about.
Man, they were tough. I wanted to improvise one tune and they told me, “Mr. Hampton, you want to go and improvise on Beethoven? You are at the wrong school.” It made me feel so bad. You couldn’t play no jazz nowhere. If you were playing a whole lot of jazz . . . man, they might put you out of the conservatory. They’d come up and say: “What are you playing? ‘I Remember April’? Lord have mercy!” They didn’t have much respect for jazz.
No one at Howard had ever really heard me play alto. But I knew enough to get a gig. There was a function on campus, so I got a group together. It was a make-up band — I got a bass player who was going to Howard, and I had a piano player, a hip player, named Gus Simms. He was a hell of a musician; he sounded like Art Blakey.
I was a little shaky, but either you know it or you don’t know it. Big Jones — he was in Count Basie’s band — he heard me and he said, “Hey man, you sound good! Give me your card.” I got gigs after that. I don’t want to brag or nothing, but I did work. I got gigs all up and down U Street. My grandmother and father had been sending me money; after that I was sending them money.
WHEN I WAS IN THE ARMY, my M.O.S. [military occupational specialty] was the clarinet. It helps you produce a better tone on the alto. And it gives you speed. Velocity. So I continued to play my clarinet, but when we got back to the barracks I would practice on my alto.
After I got out of the service I went to the Modern School of Music. See, I had my G.I. Bill and all this stuff. They had guys who were majoring in all kinds of stuff, jazz stuff. They had ensembles every day, and then we had some good concert stuff, you know — Chopin, Mozart, Bach. I finished up there with a degree.
I started playing soprano sax sometime around 1960. I was a pretty good clarinet player, so I didn’t want no straight saxophone. I bought a curved soprano at a music store downtown, on E Street or somewhere down there close to Seventh Street. That little teeny-weeny horn, it wasn’t popular. But I played it for a while and I liked it, and then Coltrane came out with “My Favorite Things.” That’s when — zoom! — soprano sax was hot. Everyone was trying to get a soprano.
I didn’t start off as a band leader; I was a sideman. I played when I wanted to play. When I was going to the Modern School of Music, I told the dean that I was playing for Rick Henderson at the Howard Theatre. “The only way I can keep the job,” I said, “is if you fix my classes so I can make the two o’clock show.” He did it, and so the school would let me off to do that two o’clock show at the Howard. We had two o’clock, five-thirty, nine o’clock, and the last show was at ten. We’d do five shows on Friday, and if it was hot we’d do an extra show.
I worked with Rick for two or three years. He was a real mean guy; he’d knock you out. I was scared of him. He would always get pissed off for no reason, and one day around Christmas time he got into it with one of the singers. He got into so many arguments and misunderstandings with the singers that Morton Gerber, the owner of the Howard, finally said, “Rick, you’re fired.” Rick started laughing. He thought he was like Duke Ellington; he thought nobody else would get his job.
I had an apartment up on Fourteenth Street at the time, and they knocked on the door and said that Gerber was looking for me. I went to see him. I’d learned to write music and had started doing orchestrations when I was in the Army. I had a whole bunch of stuff that I wanted him to see, but Gerber said, “I don’t want to see that stuff.” He said, “I know more about you than you do!” Gerber had the whole staff in there, about twenty people, and they start applauding. “Why are you applauding?” I asked. They said, “Charlie, you got the gig!”
My mother was living then, and when I got the job she said, “I knew you were going to get it.” My dream finally had come true. I got the gig.
The fellow from the union said to me: “How you going to do all this stuff? Rick’s got a band.” I said: “Yeah, Rick’s got a band. Now I got one, too. Man, I can write chords so fast I can do an orchestration in one day.” In a couple of days I had a rehearsal with the band. I had a month to get everything into shape, and I knew what to do because I d been watching closely how Rick arranged his music and what he did. Later I went and took a course in directing.
I went right out and bought a Ford Fairlane, brand-new. That was ’64. It was high yellow.
I was at the Howard Theatre from 1964 to 1971. I could write music, and I started writing charts like mad. I had some good musicians that I could depend on; they were there when I needed them. I made sure that I had only pros in there, and I had old guys and young guys all mixed up.
My band was called The Hamptonians. I used that for a couple years, but then Lionel Hampton told me I had to quit using the Hamptonians. So then I called it the Charlie Hampton Band.
I started out playing straight-ahead jazz, and I had it swingin’, man. I had an opening spot for my band, but they cut that out because the young people coming to the Howard Theatre were rock ‘n’rollers.
The jazz musicians didn’t come there too much. I didn’t see too many before the theater closed. It was in the middle of the Motown sound, and two-thirds of the people that came in there were Motown. “Can you do some funky stuff?” Gerber asked. “Hell, yeah,” I said. I did “Sunshine Superman.” I was ready for that. I just kept myself qualified, you know.
It’s not ice cream and cake being a leader, because you’re going to have some disagreements. I had a guy try to direct my band. His name was Raymond something, but they called him “Tanglefoot” because his feet was not straight. Well, he told the whole trumpet section to watch him. I got so mad I almost threw my saxophone at him. He was a big man. “Look,” I said, “you’re pretty big, so about the only thing I can do is fire your ass. You are fired! Get your stuff and don’t even put your hand on my music!” He thought I was kidding, but I fired him. He kept crying the blues, though, and I brought him back.
WHEN THE HOWARD THEATER CLOSED in 1970, somebody told me that the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center needed a music teacher. So I drove out there, but right at the door they told me that they didn’t need anybody. I had saved some money, you know, so I just said, “Solid . . . bye.”
Then the guy who told me to go out there went and told them: “You don’t know who that was. That was Charlie Hampton. He’s a hell of a musician, you know. He can help these patients a lot.” Next thing I know they sent me a letter telling me to come back out there, saying that they had misconstrued something.
So I went there as a music teacher. They bought all the instruments and gave me everything I needed. I had a blackboard and everything. I’d put a note up on the blackboard and ask “What’s this note? What does that mean?” I taught the patients everything. I would teach them how to focus on a task, and everybody would want to come to me. A lot of them had confidence in me like this. I could take a paranoid schizophrenic, give him some music, and have him playing his ass off.
I worked there twenty-seven years. Everybody was making all this money, but you know, my check was so small. Musicians don’t get paid right. I could have used more bread, but I survived. What helped me to get by was that I could play.
I used to do a patient talent show every month. You know, most of those guys, they know a lot; they know a lot about life, and they know a lot about the Bible. They came up as good kids, with the church and all that stuff like that.
They just loved me. I treated them like people, you know. Like they were somebody. I’d say, “You play this on the show, you play this.” So we bonded together and we’d be cookin’, man. My students still call me. I get a call from two or three guys now. They call me once every few months. One guy thinks I’m his daddy.
I LIKE DIZZY; I GUESS EVERYONE LIKES DIZZY. I like Chet Baker. He’s got a different style; a cool sound. I like ‘Trane. I didn’t like him at first. But I can tell when a cat runs up and down his horn that he’s bull-jivin’, and I can tell when a cat really knows what he’s doing. I like Cedar Walter; we were in the Army together. I learned a lot from him, playing the piano. He was with Art Blakey for a while. Once when they were playing in Washington he told me that Blakey wanted to see me. So I went down there. “Are you Charlie Hampton?” Art Blakey asked me. “He talks about you so much, I had to see you, Charlie.”
There’s a lot of people that I like. And, in fact, there’s a whole lotta cats out there that can play, man.
One time I played down at Lorton with my big band, and I did “Cherokee.” I featured myself playing the alto. Lorton had a great band, and they played first. I played second and then Duke Ellington was supposed to play. He was the star of the show. When we played the last song, Ellington came over there and said, “I don’t know what to play. You already played everything.” And he shook my hand and he told me that I had a hell of a band and to keep on writing stuff like that.
A lot of people say that I sound like Bird, but I really sound like Charlie Hampton. If I heard Bird play doo-duh-lee-doo, doo-duh-lee-doo, doo-duh-lee-doo, I was going to do it and then learn how to play it backwards — doo-lee-duh-doo, doo-lee-duh-doo, doo-lee-duh-doo. I just wanted to do my thing. I’ve played a lot and that’s why, I guess, I’m so cool now.
“He will always gig,” my father used to say of me. If I’m not playng, I’m not happy. I really love to play, man. I hope I can live to be 102.
This article originally appeared in the March/April 2001 issue of Regardie’s Power.
Bill Hogan