Hampton Hawes (1928-1977): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, producer, writer, and teacher

SOUND PROJECTIONS

 AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR:  KOFI  NATAMBU

  WINTER, 2016

 VOLUME THREE          NUMBER THREE

 

HENRY THREADGILL

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE
(December 3-9) 

DEXTER GORDON
(December 10-16)

JEANNE LEE
(December 17-23)

CASSANDRA WILSON
(December 24-30)  

SAM RIVERS
(December 31-January 6)

TERRY CALLIER
(January 7-13)

ODETTA
(January 14-20)

LESTER BOWIE
(January 21-27)

MACY GRAY
(January 28-February 3)
 
HAMPTON HAWES
(February 4-10)

GRACHAN MONCUR III
(February 11-17)

LARRY YOUNG
(February 18-24)

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/hampton-hawes-mn0000558596/biography

HAMPTON HAWES

(1928-1977)

Artist Biography by Scott Yanow

 

Hampton Hawes was one of the finest jazz pianists of the 1950s, a fixture on the Los Angeles scene who brought his own interpretations to the dominant Bud Powell style. In the mid- to late '40s, he played with Sonny Criss, Dexter Gordon, and Wardell Gray, among others on Central Avenue. He was with Howard McGhee's band (1950-1951), played with Shorty Rogers and the Lighthouse All-Stars, served in the Army (1952-1954), and then led trios in the L.A. area, recording many albums for Contemporary. Arrested for heroin possession in 1958, Hawes spent five years in prison until he was pardoned by President Kennedy. He led trios for the remainder of his life, using electric piano (which disturbed his longtime fans) for a period in the early to mid-'70s, but returned to acoustic piano before dying from a stroke in 1977. Hampton Hawes' memoirs, Raise Up Off Me (1974), are both frank and memorable, and most of his records (for Xanadu, Prestige, Savoy, Contemporary, Black Lion, and Freedom) are currently available. 


https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/hamptonhawes

Hampton Hawes

Who was Hampton Hawes?

Although one rarely hears of Hampton Hawes today he was a significant presence on the jazz scene in the mid- 50s then again from the mid-60s on until his death in 1977. A direct descendant of bebop who had been variously classified as “West Coast” and “funk-jazz” or “rhythm school,” Hawes transcended all these categories. He was famous for his prodigious right hand, his deep groove, his very personal playing, his profound blues conceptions, and his versatility within a mainstream context. He remained anchored in chord-change based jazz with chord changes his whole career.

A mostly self-taught musician, he matured early musically and late personally-by his own admission. His life unfolded as an impassioned story of a rise from poverty into prominence, then a fall due to a heroin addiction, which had come right out of his native culture, five years in prison and a miraculous Presidential pardon, then personal transformation and return to world-wide artistic prominence for a decade before his early death.

Origins

Hampton Hawes was born in Los Angeles, November 13, 1928. His father was a very successful pastor and his mother played piano in the church. Hampton was raised in a strict religious environment. As a child he would sit on the piano bench next to his mother and watch her play. His earliest musical influence, therefore, was gospel piano music. The street environment was not a particularly wholesome. He later reflected that most of the people he knew in his neighborhood growing up were heroin addicts.

Hawes taught himself piano as a child. His earliest musical influences were boogie-woogie, which was intensely popular in the U. S. between 1938 and 1946, Nat Cole, Fats Waller and Art Tatum. Later he came under the spell of Bud Powell, and came to play more in his style. Throughout his life he regretted that he never acquired a classical background and never became a fast music reader. Perhaps as a result his music remained intensely personal.

Growing up with music he learned by jamming with his friends. They would hang out at each other's houses and play. Fascinated with bebop, they fervently pursued it as their form of teenage rebellion against the music of their parents. Hawes regretted that his family never understood his music, never attended his performances. When he sent them his albums later on, if they liked the cover art they'd frame it and put it on the wall.

Turning Pro

By the time he was in high school he was accepting professional gigs, working with Big Jay McNeely in 1944. He even had to leave his high school graduation early to get to a job. At that time in his life he played with Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper and Short Rogers. Pepper hired him for an extended engagement at the Surf Club in Hollywood in 1952. By that time he had become a heroin addict. As he put it:

You see everybody going down the street in a green Buick, and you start thinking, “What is it with these green Buicks?” You know, you just got to find out for yourself. Well, I found out all right, I sure did. (Official biography, 1974).

Hawes was sent to the Far East during his stint in the army, 1952 to 1954, which only furthered his addiction. Once back in civilian life he formed a trio with bassist Red Mitchell. They developed a rare musical affinity. He performed with Mitchell in gigs throughout the U. S., from 1955-58, including runs at the Embers in New York (where he drew $1500 per week), Storyville in Boston and the Blue Note clubs in Chicago and Philadelphia. Remaining within the bebop style, they used a variety of drummers, and during one six-month period, Kenny Burrell on guitar.

Successful Recordings

During that period Hawes got to know Lester Koenig, owner of the Los Angeles-based Contemporary label. Koenig recorded Hawes on a series of brilliant albums, including Hampton Hawes, Vol. 1: The Trio in 1955 and All Night Session (3 LPs) on Hawes' birthday in 1956, both of which garnered five stars from Down Beat. In 1957 jazz critic and teacher John Mehegan classed Hawes as part of the “rhythmic (funky) school of jazz piano,” of which Horace Silver was the acknowledged innovator, and attributed to him “the best blues in jazz piano today” (Mehegan, 17). He even composed a blues, “Hampton's Pulpit,” very similar to Silver's famous “Opus de Funk,” and plays it on Vol. 1 of the All Night Session. The title makes the connection clear between funk in jazz and Hawes' gospel roots. But Hawes's fluidity of melodic invention strained the rhythmic/funky categorization, despite his clear talent for this approach. Hawes was a master at constructing solos beginning with a phrase and gradually building, drawing the listener in. When he reached the peak of his energy he was at a level few outside of Bud Powell could approach.

Busted

Hawes' heroin addiction was pulling him down at the time, and in 1958 he was arrested for possession and sentenced to 10 years in a prison hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. He had pled guilty, noticing that friends who were caught and pled not guilty were usually sentenced to twice that. In a 1972 article in Harper's which gives a foretaste of Hawes' hard-hitting and award-winning autobiography, Raise Up Off Me, he describes the distance he felt from the psychiatrists who interviewed him during his incarceration:

In an innocent, ungreedy kind of way those doctors were like the jackleg preachers, all robes and ceremony. It wasn't that any of them was dumb or incompetent, but if you start with someone like me who has come out of the haven of the church into the streets, playing jazz and messing with dope, why there's no white psychiatrist in the wide world qualified to analyze me because, wherever he would start from his thinking is going to be alien and wrong. There is no way he can possibly conceive where I'm coming from. So it isn't his fault that he doesn't know what he's doing (3).

In January, 1961, two years into his time, he was watching President Kennedy's inauguration on TV. “Something about the look of him the voice and the eyes, way he stood bring and coatless and proud in that cold air...I thought, That's the right cat, my troubles are nearing an end” (Hawes, 3). Hawes decided to apply for a Presidential Pardon, against all advice of the prison staff. One of them even told him his intention to apply indicated that he had problems accepting reality, which would probably end him up back on dope once he got out.

He finally received the application towards the end of 1962, sending it in with many letters of recommendation in April of the following year. That August the pardon came through, and it seemed like a miracle to everyone there but Hawes. He considered it simply the proper righting of a wrong. It was only the third such Presidential pardon in 40 years.

Return

Back in circulation, Hawes had to fight an uphill battle, both against his own depression and against the music scene which had drastically changed. He started by working locally around Los Angeles. Of an early post- release performance Down Beat's John Tynan wrote:

When Hawes tore into his solos, it was as if the piano had a life of its own; it was a performance that scorched. These were moments to be long remembered by those attending. One listener, a well-known drummer, commented: “It's about time we had a real piano player back” (Feather, 16).
Jazz was struggling against the growing rock market, which by the end of the decade had lured many prominent jazz artists into modifying their approach in its direction. The commercial pressures were heavy, but Hawes resisted, sticking with his high-energy bebop- based style. He just couldn't get into the more rock- based music of Ramsey Lewis or Les McCann.

Hawes stuck to the music he loved, knowing that record company executives had been wrong many time in the past. He began working again with Red Mitchell, but replaced him in 1966 with Jimmy Garrison. In 1967 he began getting gigs outside southern California. In 1968 he made a duo piano recording with Algerian pianist Martial Solal, another brilliant trend resister. In 1971 he toured Europe, with stops in London, Paris and Copenhagen. From then on he divided his time mainly between Los Angeles area gigs and foreign tours. He recorded a duo album with Charlie Haden, Turnaround, released in 1977, and began experimenting with electronic music around that time. He died in Los Angeles on May 22, 1977.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/16/the-jazz-pianist-that-john-f-kennedy-saved.html

The Jazz Pianist That John F. Kennedy Saved

Fifty years ago this week, John F. Kennedy granted a presidential pardon to jazz pianist Hampton Hawes—and helped make him a legend.

by Ted Gioia
08.16.13
The Daily Beast

Millions of Americans found inspiration in John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address, but few responded more enthusiastically than jazz pianist Hampton Hawes. Hawes watched the speech from a federal prison hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, where he was serving a 10-year sentence on drug charges. “That’s the right cat,” he later described his reaction to the new president. “Looks like he got some soul and might listen.”

The following day, Hawes told a prison official that he wanted to apply for a presidential pardon. “That’s the root of your trouble, Hampton,” the official responded. “You refuse to be realistic. When you leave here, you’re probably going back to dope because you’ll still be thinking unrealistic.”

More than a year elapsed before Hawes found an attorney willing to handle the pardon request. Finally, toward the close of 1962, a stack of pages arrived in the mail, but this massive “Application for Executive Clemency” was just the start of more work. Hawes spent countless hours filling in the blanks and answering the questions, even adding some Latin phrases (“heavy legal shit,” as he later described it) he got out of the prison library. The pianist also secured 18 letters of recommendation to accompany his request for a pardon.

Hawes then sent it off to Washington, D.C., and waited.

Against all odds, President Kennedy responded. Although many major jazz stars spent time in prison on narcotics charges during the middle decades of the 20th century, only Hawes received a presidential pardon. Fifty years ago, on August 16, 1963, JFK granted executive clemency to the pianist, and thus allowed one of the most talented jazz artists of the era to resume his career.

The Hawes pardon would be one of Kennedy’s last executive acts. Only 98 days later, Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK in Dallas, not far from the prison Hawes recently left. Kennedy only granted clemency to 43 people during his last year in office. Hawes received pardon No. 42.

The pianist would survive Kennedy by 15 years, before succumbing to a cerebral hemorrhage at age 48. But during that period, Hawes made more than a dozen albums, performed all over the world, and even wrote a successful book. His autobiography Raise Up Off Me, co-authored with the late Don Asher, still ranks among the most readable—and brutally honest—jazz memoirs ever published. 

Hawes first made his mark on L.A.’s Central Avenue jazz scene while still a teenager. One of the first West Coast musicians to embrace the new bebop sound, Hawes learned its intricacies straight from the source, serving as informal chauffeur to jazz icon Charlie Parker during the latter’s L.A. stint in the mid-1940s.

Hawes played piano with an intensity and drive that stood in stark contrast to the cool West Coast jazz sound that gained popularity during the 1950s. “Hampton Hawes might be one of the most intriguing pianists in the jazz canon,” jazz musician Matthew Shipp recently told me. “He is a West Coast musician who plays with what to me feels like an East Coast energy and passion.”

Signed by Les Koenig to the Contemporary label, Hawes made his mark via a series of gritty trio and quartet recordings still prized by jazz fans today. If forced to pick a favorite, I’d point to the remarkable results of a marathon session that started after sunset on November 12, 1956, and didn’t finish until dawn the following day. In that one burst of creative energy, Hawes recorded more than two hours of riveting jazz music. The label released All Night Session!, as the project is known today, on three LPs.

But the same artist who played with such fire on the bandstand was burning out of control in his private life. The son of a minister, Hawes started using heroin around the time he turned 20. He saw it as part of jazz vocation, and later claimed that most of the musicians he knew at the time were addicts.

Hawes later denied that drugs helped him play jazz—a beguiling myth that killed many of his contemporaries. “Some learned, and others never did,” he wrote in his autobiography. But Hawes gained this wisdom the hard way, and almost too late. He was arrested on his 30th birthday. The jazz fan who pestered him for narcotics turned out to be a federal agent. When the judge handed down a 10-year sentence, the pianist realized with shock and anger that he had just lost the prime years of his career. But Kennedy’s pardon gave Hawes a rare second chance and, to his credit, he made the most of it.

Thirty-five years after his death, Hawes is still an inspiring figure to jazz musicians. Pianist Shipp praises Hawes’ “clarity, grace and energy” but also notes the “fearlessness to how he connects his ideas and generates his space.”  Jazz pianist Ethan Iverson, a member of the influential trio the Bad Plus, is too young to have ever heard Hawes in performance, but he has repeatedly praised this predecessor’s work, and even published note-for-note transcriptions of several of Hawes’s solos on his website. “His music is always soulful and authentic,” Iverson tells me, adding that the pianist’s memoir “teaches jazz history better than any textbook.”

I agree with their appraisals. But Hampton Hawes may have shown the most fearlessness away from the keyboard, when he took on the system and found an unlikely advocate in the president of the United States. In the coming weeks, we will be reading about many 50th anniversaries relating to the closing days of the Kennedy administration and its aftermath, but these will be the occasion for mourning and musing on might-have-beens. Unlike these, the Hawes pardon gives us an anniversary well worth celebrating.

Hawes may have described it best. “Wasn’t no miracle,” he explained to those startled by this turnabout in his fortunes. “The only thing that had happened was the most ordinary thing in the world—somebody was watching over the country.”


http://hamptonhawes.jazzgiants.net/biography/ 

Biography

HAMPTON HAWES

Hampton Barnett Hawes Jr. (pianist) was born on November 13, 1928 in Los Angeles, California and passed away on May 22, 1977 in Los Angeles at the age of 48.

His father, Hampton Hawes, Sr., was minister of Westminster Presbysterian Church in Los Angeles. His mother, the former Gertrude Holman, was Westminster’s church pianist.

Hawes’ first experience with the piano was as a toddler sitting on his mother’s lap while she practiced. He was reportedly able to pick out fairly complex tunes by the age of three. Entirely self-taught, by his teens Hawes was playing with the leading jazz musicians on the West Coast, including Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Art Pepper, Shorty Rogers, and Teddy Edwards. His second professional job, at 19, was playing for eight months with the Howard McGhee Quintet at the Hi De Ho Club, in a group that included Charlie Parker.

After serving in the U.S. army in Japan from 1952–1954, Hawes formed his own trio, with the bassist Red Mitchell and drummer Chuck Thompson. The three-record Trio sessions made by this group in 1955 on Contemporary Records were considered some of the finest records to come out of the West Coast at the time. The next year, Hawes added guitarist Jim Hall for the All Night Sessions – three records made during a non-stop recording session at the Contemporary Studios in Los Angeles.

After a six-month national tour in 1956, Hawes won the ‘New Star of the Year’ award in Down Beat magazine, and ‘Arrival of the Year’ in Metronome magazine. The following year, Hawes recorded in New York City with Charles Mingus on the album “Mingus Three”.

Struggling for many years with a heroin addiction, Hawes became the target of a federal undercover operation in Los Angeles in 1958. The Drug Enforcement Agency bargained that Hawes would inform on suppliers in L.A. rather than risk a successful music career. Hawes was arrested on heroin charges on his 30th birthday, but refused to cooperate, and was sentenced to ten years in a federal prison hospital – twice the mandatory minimum. In the weeks between his trial and sentencing, Hawes recorded an album of spirituals and gospel songs, The Sermon, for Contemporary Records.

After serving three years at Fort Worth Federal Medical Facility in Texas, in 1961 Hawes was watching President Kennedy’s inaugural speech on television, when he became convinced that Kennedy would pardon him. In an almost miraculous turn, President Kennedy granted Hawes Executive Clemency in 1963, the 42nd of only 43 such pardons given in the final year of Kennedy’s presidency.
After his release from prison, Hawes resumed playing and recording. During a world tour in 1967-68, the pianist was surprised to discover that he had become a legend among jazz listeners overseas. During a ten-month tour of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, Hawes recorded nine albums, played sold out shows and concert halls in ten countries, and was covered widely in the press, appearing on European television and radio.

Raise Up Off Me, Hawes’ autobiography, written with Don Asher and published in 1974, shed light on his heroin addiction, the bebop movement, and his friendships with some of the leading jazz musicians of his time. The book won the prestigious ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for music writing in 1975. Critic Gary Giddins, who wrote the book’s introduction, calls Raise Up Off Me “a major contribution to the literature of jazz.” The Penguin Guide to Jazz cites it as “one of the most moving memoirs ever written by a musician, and a classic of jazz writing.”

In the 1970s, Hawes experimented with electronic music (Fender-Rhodes made a special instrument for him), although eventually he returned to playing the acoustic piano.

As a pianist Hawes’ style is instantly recognizable – for its almost unparalleled swing, unique approach to time and harmony, and its depth of emotional expression, particularly in a blues context. Hawes influenced a great number of prominent pianists, including André Previn, Oscar Peterson, Horace Silver, Claude Williamson, Pete Jolly, Toshiko Akiyoshi and others. Hawes’ own influences came from a number of sources, including the gospel music and spirituals he heard in his father’s church as a child, and the boogie-woogie piano of Earl Hines. He also learned much from pianists Bud Powell and Nat King Cole among others. By Hawes’ own account, however, his principal source of influence was his friend Charlie Parker.

Hampton Hawes died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage in 1977, at only 48 years old. He is buried next to his father, Hampton Hawes, Sr., who had died just five months earlier, at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery. In 2004, the City Council of Los Angeles passed a resolution declaring November 13 ‘Hampton Hawes Day’ throughout the City of Los Angeles.

http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2016/05/raise-up-off-me-portrait-of-hampton.html

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Raise Up Off Me: A Portrait of Hampton Hawes

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Hampton Hawes [1928–1977] was one of Jazz's greatest pianists.

With the help of Don Asher, a jazz pianist and author of nine books, Hawes wrote an autobiography entitled Raise Up Off Me: A Portrait of Hampton Hawes " which was published in 1974.

Gary Giddins, the Executive Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York, has called Raise Up Off Me: A Portrait of Hampton Hawes "a major contribution to the literature of jazz."

Everyone who spent time with Charlie Parker seems to have written about it. Here, from Hawes's Raise Up Off Me (see p. 306), is some convincing testimony to Parker's overpowering influence.

AT THE HI-DE-HO CLUB

HAMPTON  HAWES as told to Don Asher

“One of the great tracks in jazz is Charlie Parker's "Parker's Mood." It begins with a three-note figure contained in a G minor triad—in this sequence: Bb-G-D—and whenever you heard someone whistling those notes in L.A., you knew you were in the presence of a friend. It signified you were using but cool, and when you went to buy dope late at night (which was the usual time to cop) if the bell wasn't working or you didn't want to jar the Man out of a sound sleep or there might be someone uncool on the premises, you went Bb-G-D in that fast, secret way and the cat would pop his head out the window. When Bird first played his "Parker's Mood" I think those notes might have been drifting around somewhere in his head and they just flew right out.

In 1947 I graduated from Polytechnic High School, split out the back of the auditorium (thinking, Damn, I'm free, got my diploma and didn't f**k up, can sleep till twelve tomorrow), threw my cap and gown in the back of the Ford and made it only fifteen minutes late to The Last Word where I was working with the Jay McNeely band. A few months later I joined Howard McGhee's Quintet at the Hi-De-Ho. Bird had worked his way back from the East Coast and joined us. When I had first heard him at Billy Berg's in 1945, I couldn't believe what he was doing, how anyone could so totally block out everything extraneous, light a fire that hot inside him and constantly feed on that fire.

Now at the time there were maybe ten people in the neighborhood of 50th and Western who knew there was a genius playing alto. Most people who had heard him thought he was crazy. His playing was too free and blazing and pure; it could be dissonant and harsh on the ears if you weren't accustomed to the sound. He had already recorded those early classics with Dizzy but you couldn't find the records on any jukeboxes.

Today the DJ's can take a new sound and spread it like flash fire; before you know it you're on television beaming to thirty million people. But this was before TV, and jazz was years away from reaching the concert halls. The only people in the vicinity of 50th and Western who were hip to him were a few of the street people, one or two chicks at the house where he was staying — the woman who owned it, a madame with a whorehouse on the east side, was a good friend of his and put him up whenever he was in town — and, of course, other musicians. When word got around where he was playing they came to check him out. Motherfuckers peeked and backed right up. Those of us who were affected the strongest felt we'd be willing to do anything to warm ourselves by that fire, get some of that grease pumping through our veins. He f**ked up all our minds. It was where the ultimate truth was.

As with anyone that heavy and different, some people were awed or afraid of him and kept their distance. Others pursued him, would drop by his pad and hang out, figuring if they were around him long enough some of his shit was bound to rub off on them. I watched motherf**kers write down his solos note for note, play them on their own gigs and then wonder why they didn't sound as good. And if they had to follow Bird's solo with their own stuff, that would really leave them exposed — like standing naked and wet in a cold wind. Bird would take advantage of these dudes, borrow money and burn them in various ways. It wasn't that he was a bad cat, any junkie would do the same thing. It was a matter of dope or no dope; survival. Bird was out and he was strung, and in order to be around him you had to contend with that.

I never crowded or bothered him. I was busy trying to figure out my own life and I sensed that aside from his music it wasn't going to do me any good to be spending a lot of time around Bird. But he was the best player in the game, and on the stand when he'd sometimes look around at me and smile I knew I had played something good.

He was a sad driver — when his two-year-old car fell apart he left it in the street; borrowed mine once and tried to shift without using the clutch — so I'd pick him up every night at the madame's house in my ' 37 Ford, take him to work and bring him back. When I came home early one night he motioned me to follow him to his room. I waded through piles of sandwich wrappers, beer cans and liquor bottles. Watched him line up and take down eleven shots of whiskey, pop a handful of bennies, then tie up, smoking a joint at the same time. He sweated like a horse for five minutes, got up, put on his suit and a half hour later was on the stand playing strong and beautiful.

For two weeks he never said a word to me — going to the club, on the stand, or driving home. But it wasn't an uncomfortable silence; he was either stoned, froze, or just off somewhere else, and I respected whatever trip he was on and whatever distant place it carried him to. It was never an ego trip. If someone were to ask him who he liked better on alto, Henry Prior or Sonny Criss — it was the sort of thing a young player starting to come up would ask — he'd shrug and say, Both. They're both cool. Shooting down other players was as foreign to his nature as a longing for sharp clothes and a Cadillac or whether or not he had a white woman, which were the black badges of success in those days. He had plenty of white women but it never interfered with his music.

Sometimes I'd pull up in front of the club and he'd be too high to get out of the car. Howard McGhee would ask me where Bird was. I'd say, ‘Sittin' in the car.’ No point in trying to pull him out, he wouldn't have been able to play anyway. After a while he'd get himself together, walk in and start blowing — even before he reached the stand, weaving his way through the tables playing in that beautiful, fiery way.

At the end of the second week of the gig he spoke his first words to me. It was close to three in the morning when I left him off at the madame's house. He got out, started walking toward the house, then stuck his head back in the window and said, "I heard you tonight."

The next day I told the guys in the band I was going to drop by Bird's place and see if he wanted to go to a movie. Everybody said, That's a dumb idea, he isn't going to want to go to any show. That's too square for him, too bourgeois. I dropped by anyway. He came to the door in a T-shirt and the same pin-stripe suit he wore on the stand. Said it was a nice day and a show sounded like a good idea. We went to a newsreel playing nearby. As I was buying my ticket I realized Bird was no longer with me. Looked up and down the street and saw him coming out of an alley halfway down the block. He wandered up to the box office and laid out his money, not saying anything about the little side trip. Afterwards we ate a hot dog and drove around downtown in my Ford, enjoying the spring day. When I dropped him off back at the house he said, "I had a nice time."

That weekend I smoked my first joint, some light green from Chicago Bird pulled out as we were driving down Avalon Boulevard to get a hamburger and a Coke. Didn't feel anything till after we ate and I started driving home. I said, Man, why are all these horns honking at me? Bird said, You're driving backwards. I stopped and let him take over the wheel. He made it back to his place, stripping gears all the way. I walked the ten blocks to my house and was weaving up to the door when I saw a tiny old lady from my father's church staring at me. Watched me trying to make it to the door and said, "Young man, are you behaving yourself?" I made it up the stairs, lay down under the bed, and getting a flash from the old church days asked God aloud to deliver me from the devil.

Next day Bird phoned me and said, "That was some powerful light green."

His uncle was Bishop Peter E. Parker and maybe he was close to God. I know he was damn near like a prophet in his music. He scared a lot of people over the years and died of pneumonia, so they say, in Baroness Nica Rothschild's Fifth Avenue living room when he was thirty-four. But as long as I knew Bird, I was never awed or afraid of him. I loved him. And how can you be afraid of somebody you love?”

http://www.jerryjazzmusician.com/2014/10/hampton-hawes-dependability-piano/
 
Features » Book Excerpts
Hampton Hawes writes about the “dependability” of the piano

October 4, 2014 

HAMPTON HAWES

      

    I am in the early stages of reading pianist Hampton Hawes’ 1972 autobiography (written with Don Asher) Raise Up Off Me, which Gary Giddins called, in his introduction, “the first book to give an insider’s view of the most provocative and misunderstood movement in jazz — the modernism of the ’40s, bebop.” It is incredibly entertaining and a witty, lucid, and smart read.

     In a paragraph representative of the book’s quality, Hawes writes about his respect for and appreciation of his instrument’s dependability:

"The piano was the only sure friend I had because it was the only thing that was consistent, always made sense and responded directly to what I did. Pianos don’t ever change. Sittin’ there every day. You wanna play me, here I am. The D is still here, the A flats still here, they’re always going to be there and it don’t matter whether it’s Sunday, Ash Wednesday or the Fourth of July. Play it right and it comes out right; mess with it and it’ll make you back up. A piano don’t lie. Check the prancing players with the sparkles in their eyes and the pretty fingernails flashing up and down the keyboard — listen closely and that’s all there is, just flash and icing, no more depth or meaning than a wood chip dancing down a waterfall. A keyboard is more consistent than life, it gives you back what you put into it, no more, no less. In the forties Bud Powell had grease in his veins and burned the motherfucker up; Thelonious Monk plays it strange and beautiful because he feels strange and beautiful. The piano was the first secure and honest thing in my life, I could approach it on my own and fail or be good. Straight to the point and quick."

Excerpted from Raise Up Off Me:  A Portrait of Hampton Hawes, by Hampton Hawes with Don Ashe

THE MUSIC OF HAMPTON HAWES: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MR. HAWES

This Is Hampton Hawes Vol. 2: The Trio --(Full Album)

 

Hampton Hawes - Blues the Most
from the album Trio vol. 1 (1955)

 

Hampton Hawes, piano
Red Mitchell, bass
Chuck Tompson, drums

Hampton Hawes Quartet - 'For Real'-- (1958)

 
Personnel: Harold Land (tenor sax), Hampton Hawes (piano), Scott LaFaro (bass), Frank Butler (drums)

Hampton Hawes Trio- 'The Seance'-- (Full Album):

 

Hampton Hawes Trio- The Seance

1. The Seance
2. Oleo
3. Easy Street
4. Suddenly I Thought Of You
5. For Heaven's Sake
6. My Romance

Piano – Hampton Hawes
Bass – Red Mitchell
Drums – Donald Bailey

Hampton Hawes- Live at the Montmartre 1971 full album:

 

Personnel:

Hampton Hawes: piano
Henry Franklin: bass
Michael Carvin: drums
Dexter Gordon: tenor sax on Dexter’s Deck

Track Listing:

The Camel
Little Miss Laurie
Broad Blue Acres
This Guy’s In Love With You
Footprints
Spanish Way
Dexter’s Deck

Hampton Hawes--"All The Things You Are"

 

Hampton Hawes, Jim Hall, Red Mitchell, Bruz Freeman - "Jordu":

 

Hampton Hawes Trio - Somebody Loves Me (1956):

 
Personnel: Hampton Hawes (piano), Red Mitchell (bass). Chuck Thompson (drums)

from the album 'EVERYBODY LIKES HAMPTON HAWES, VOL.3 - THE TRIO' (Contemporary Records)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Hawes

Hampton Hawes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hampton Hawes
Birth name	Hampton Barnett Hawes, Jr.
Born	November 13, 1928 Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Died	May 22, 1977 (aged 48) Los Angeles
Genres	Jazz, jazz fusion, soul jazz, jazz-funk
Occupation(s)	Musician
Instruments	Piano
Labels	Contemporary, Discovery, Fantasy
Associated acts	Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Jim Hall, Barney Kessell, Charles Mingus, Art Pepper, Shorty Rogers

Hampton Barnett Hawes, Jr. (November 13, 1928 – May 22, 1977) was an American jazz pianist. He was the author of the memoir Raise Up Off Me,^[1] which won the Deems-Taylor Award for music writing in 1975.

Contents

 

• 1 Early life
• 2 Later life and career
• 3 Style and influence
• 4 Discography
  • 4.1 As leader
  • 4.2 As sideman
• 5 Bibliography
• 6 References
• 7 External links

 

Early life

 

Hampton Hawes was born on November 13, 1928, in Los Angeles, California.^[2] His father, Hampton Hawes, Sr., was minister of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles. His mother, the former Gertrude Holman, was Westminster's church pianist. Hawes' first experience with the piano was as a toddler sitting on his mother's lap while she practiced. He was reportedly able to pick out fairly complex tunes by the age of three.^{[citation needed]}

Later life and career

 

Entirely self-taught,^{[citation needed]} Hawes by his teens was playing with the leading jazz musicians on the West Coast, including Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Art Pepper, Shorty Rogers, and Teddy Edwards. His second professional job, at 19, was playing for eight months with the Howard McGhee Quintet at the Hi De Ho Club, in a group that included Charlie Parker.

After serving in the U.S. army in Japan from 1952 to 1954, Hawes formed his own trio, with bassist Red Mitchell and drummer Chuck Thompson. The three-record Trio sessions made by this group in 1955 on Contemporary Records were considered some of the finest records to come out of the West Coast at the time.^{[citation needed]} The next year, Hawes added guitarist Jim Hall for the All Night Sessions – three records made during a non-stop recording session at the Contemporary Studios in Los Angeles.

After a six-month national tour in 1956, Hawes won the "New Star of the Year" award in Down Beat magazine, and "Arrival of the Year" in Metronome. The following year, he recorded in New York City with Charles Mingus on the album Mingus Three (Jubilee, 1957).

Struggling for many years with heroin addiction, in 1958 Hawes became the target of a federal undercover operation in Los Angeles.^{[citation needed]} Investigators believed that he would inform on suppliers rather than risk ruining a successful music career. Hawes was arrested on heroin charges on his 30th birthday but refused

to cooperate^{[citation needed]} and was sentenced to ten years in a federal prison hospital, which was twice the mandatory minimum.^{[citation needed]} In the intervening weeks between his trial and sentencing, Hawes recorded an album of spirituals and gospel songs, The Sermon.

In 1961, after serving three years at Fort Worth Federal Medical Facility in Texas, Hawes was watching President Kennedy's inaugural speech on television, when he became convinced that Kennedy would pardon him.^{[citation needed]} Kennedy granted Hawes Executive Clemency in 1963, the 42nd of only 43 such pardons given in the final year of Kennedy's presidency.

After being released from prison, Hawes resumed playing and recording. During a world tour in 1967–68, he was startled to discover that he had become a legend^{[citation needed]} among jazz listeners overseas. During a ten-month tour of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, Hawes recorded nine albums, played sold out shows and concert halls in ten countries, and was covered widely in the press, including appearances on European television and radio.

Raise Up Off Me, Hawes' autobiography, written with Don Asher and published in 1974, shed light on his heroin addiction, the bebop movement, and his friendships with some of the leading jazz musicians of his time. It was the first book about the bebop era written by a musician^{[citation needed]}, and won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for music writing in 1975.^{[citation needed]} Critic Gary Giddins, who wrote the book's introduction, called Raise Up Off Me "a major contribution to the literature of jazz." The Penguin Guide to Jazz cites it as "one of the most moving memoirs ever written by a musician, and a classic of jazz writing."

In the 1970s, Hawes experimented with electronic music (Fender-Rhodes made a special instrument for him), although eventually he returned to playing the acoustic piano.

Hampton Hawes died of a brain hemorrhage in 1977 at the age of 48. He was buried next to his father, Hampton Hawes, Sr., who had died five months earlier. In 2004, the City Council of Los Angeles passed a resolution declaring November 13 "Hampton Hawes Day".^{[citation needed]}

Style and influence

 

Hawes influenced a great number of prominent pianists,^{[citation needed]} including André Previn, Oscar Peterson, Horace Silver, Claude Williamson, Pete Jolly, and Toshiko Akiyoshi. Hawes' own influences came from a number of sources, including the gospel music and spirituals he heard in his father's church as a child, and the boogie-woogie piano of Earl Hines. Hawes also learned much from pianists Bud Powell and Nat King Cole, among others. By Hawes' own account,^{[citation needed]} however, his principal source of influence was his friend Charlie Parker.

Discography

 

As leader

• The Hampton Hawes Memorial Album (Xanadu) 1952–1956
• Hampton Hawes Trio (Contemporary, 1955)
• This Is Hampton Hawes (Contemporary, 1956)
• Everybody Likes Hampton Hawes (Contemporary, 1956)
• All Night Session! Vol. 1 (Contemporary, 1956 [1958])
• All Night Session! Vol. 2 (Contemporary, 1956 [1958])
• All Night Session! Vol. 3 (Contemporary, 1956 [1958])
• Curtis Fuller and Hampton Hawes with French Horns (Status, 1957)
• Four! (Contemporary, 1958)
• Bird Song (Contemporary, 1956–58 [1999])
• For Real! (Contemporary, 1958 [1961])
• The Sermon (Contemporary, 1958 [1987])
• The Green Leaves of Summer (Contemporary, 1965)
• Here and Now (Contemporary, 1966)
• The Seance (Contemporary, 1966 [1969])
• I'm All Smiles (Contemporary, 1966 [1973])
• Hamp's Piano (SABA, 1967) - also released as Hampton Hawes in Europe (Prestige)
• Key for Two (BYG Actuel, 1968 [1979]) with Martial Solal
• Blues for Bud (Black Lion, 1968 [1986])
• Spanish Steps (Black Lion, 1968 [1971])
• The Challenge (Victor, 1968)
• Jam Session (Columbia, 1968)
• This Guy's in Love with You (Freedom, 1971 [1975]) - also released as Live at the Montmartre (Freedom)
• A Little Copenhagen Night Music (Freedom, 1971 [1977])
• Universe (Prestige, 1972)
• Blues for Walls (Prestige, 1973)
• Live at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago Volume One (Enja, 1973 [1981]) with Cecil McBee and Roy Haynes
• Live at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago Volume Two (Enja, 1973 [1989]) with Cecil McBee and Roy Haynes
• Playin' in the Yard (Prestige, 1973)
• Northern Windows (Prestige, 1974)
• Recorded Live at the Great American Music Hall (Concord Jazz, 1975 [1983])
• As Long as There's Music (Artists House, 1976 [1977]) with Charlie Haden
• Something Special (Contemporary, 1976 [1994])
• Hampton Hawes at the Piano (Contemporary, 1976 [1978])
• Hampton Hawes Early Years Trio and Quartet Sessions 1951–56 (Fresh Sound)
•  

As sideman

 

• Shorty Rogers – Modern Sounds (Capitol, 1951)
• Art Pepper – The Early Show (Xanadu, 1952)
• Shorty Rogers – Shorty Rogers and His Giants (RCA Victor, 1953)
• Art Pepper – Surf Ride (Savoy, 1952–1954 [1956])
• Bud Shank – Bud Shank – Shorty Rogers – Bill Perkins (Pacific Jazz, 1955)
• Red Mitchell – Red Mitchell (Bethlehem, 1955)
• Barney Kessel – Kessel Plays Standards (Contemporary, 1955)
• Charles Mingus – Mingus Three (Jubilee, 1957)
• Prestige All Stars – Baritones and French Horns (Prestige) 1957
• Barney Kessel – Let's Cook! (Contemporary, 1957 [1962])
• Sonny Rollins – Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders (Contemporary; Fantasy, 1958)
• Sonny Criss – I'll Catch the Sun! (Prestige, 1969)
• Sonny Stitt – So Doggone Good (Prestige, 1972)
• Gene Ammons – Gene Ammons and Friends at Montreux (Prestige, 1973)
• Blue Mitchell – Stratosonic Nuances (RCA, 1975)
• Art Pepper – Living Legend (Contemporary, 1976)
• Art Farmer – On the Road (Contemporary, 1976
•  

Bibliography

 

• Raise Up Off Me: A Portrait of Hampton Hawes by Hampton Hawes, Don Asher, and Gary Giddins
• Hampton Hawes: A Discography by Roger Hunter & Mike Davis. 127pp. Manana Publications, Manchester, England. 1986.

^[3]

References

Yanow, Scott. "Hampton Hawes | Biography & History | AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved 6 November 2016.

"California Birth Index, 1905-1995 [database on-line]". United States: The Generations Network. 2005. Retrieved 2009-10-06.

3. Mike Davis (co-author)

External links

• Biography portal

• Hampton Hawes Discography
• "Hampton Hawes and the Low Blues" by Ethan Ivers