Jazz Great Lionel Hampton Dead At 94

Lionel Hampton, the vibraphone virtuoso and standout showman whose six-decade career ranked him with the greatest names in jazz history, died Saturday at a Manhattan hospital. He was 94.

Hampton, whose health was failing in recent years, died of heart failure at Mount Sinai Medical Center at about 6:15 a.m., said his manager, Phil Leshin.

Hampton was "probably the last major icon from the era of the Big Band and jazz," Leshin told CBS News.

"He was a great man, a sweet, nice, gentleman, and one of the greatest musicians this country has ever produced," Leshin said to The Associated Press. "He's influenced thousands of musicians around the world."

Saxophonist Sonny Rollins, who played with Hampton in the 1950s, said, "He was really a towering jazz figure. He really personifed the spirit of jazz because he had so much joy about his playing."

Hampton worked with a who's who of jazz greats, from Benny Goodman to Charlie Parker to Quincy Jones. But over the last decade, the jazz great battled health problems and a fire that destroyed a half-century of his musical arrangements and all of his clothes.

Two days after the 1997 blaze at his Lincoln Center apartment, Hampton was forced to borrow a suit, socks, shoes and underwear to receive the Presidential Medal of Arts at the White House.

During more than six decades of music making, Hampton rose to a performing plane inhabited by the likes of Louis Armstrong and Goodman — two artists who played important roles in his early career.

Goodman's famed jazz quartet, with Hampton, pianist Teddy Wilson and drummer Gene Krupa, broke racial barriers that had largely kept black musicians from performing with whites in public. Wilson and Hampton comprised the black half of the foursome, which began live performances in 1936.

Wilson had recorded with Goodman and Krupa previously, and white soloists "jammed" informally with black groups, but a color line was drawn when a white band was on stage.

Later, Hampton's bands traveled the globe as musical ambassadors from America. They also were hothouses or showcases for such greats as Jones, Parker, Charlie Mingus, Illinois Jacquet, Dexter Gordon, Earl Bostic, Fats Novarro, Joe Williams and Dinah Washington.

Hampton's music was melodic and swinging, but audiences also responded to his electric personality — the big smile, energy and bounce that contributed to his showmanship. When not swinging on the vibes, he drummed, he sang and he played his own peculiar style of piano, using two fingers as if they were vibraphone mallets.

"When I was a kid, I always wanted to put on a show," he told an interviewer shortly after his 80th birthday. "I always liked to be taking bows."

Hampton, who did not have a copy of his birth certificate, marked his birthdate at April 20, 1908. His place of birth was a matter of disagreement, although it was generally accepted that he was born in Louisville, Ky.

After his father was declared missing in action in World War I, Hampton was raised by his maternal grandmother in Birmingham, Ala., and Chicago.

For a time he attended a Roman Catholic grade school in Kenosha, Wis., where a nun taught him to play snare drum and twirl the sticks.

Back in Chicago, the teenage Hampton got a job hawking the Chicago Defender and soon was playing drums in the black newspaper's newsboy jazz band.

After high school, Hampton caught on with Les Hite's band and followed Hite to Los Angeles.

The event that put Hampton together with the vibraphone was a 1930 recording session in Culver City, with Hite's band backing Louis Armstrong.

"There was a set of vibes in the corner," Hampton recalled. "Louis said, `Do you know how to play it?"'

Hampton had played the xylophone, a somewhat similar instrument, while growing up. After about 45 minutes of noodling on the vibraphone, he felt sure enough of himself to swing in behind Armstrong on "Memories of You."

The future "King of Vibes" toured with his own band along the Pacific Coast, then settled in at the Paradise Nightclub in Los Angeles. In August 1936, Benny Goodman came around to hear Hampton play.

Three months later, Hampton was in the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York, starting out "four gorgeous years with Benny" in the new, trailblazing Benny Goodman Quartet.

Hampton's most famous composition, "Flying Home," dates from this time. He estimated that he played it 300 times a year in the half century after writing it in 1937.

He took to the road with his own orchestra in 1940 and built bookings into the million-dollar-a-year range. After the big-band era died, Hampton pared down to a smaller group — around eight players dubbed the Inner Circle. He occasionally put bigger groups together for international tours.

"I don't have to play rock 'n' roll," he said, describing turn-away business in later years. "I play what I always played, like `Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar."'

Hampton regularly turned up at colleges and major jazz festivals in addition to touring abroad. He made guest appearances on numerous television variety shows and recorded scores of jazz albums and singles.

A Republican Party stalwart, Hampton appeared at fund raising and celebratory party events, but played the White House during Democratic administrations too, performing over the years for Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Bush.

He said his had been the first black band to entertain in the White House when he played for Truman.

He played "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Sweet Georgia Brown" at the memorial service for Nelson Rockefeller in 1979.

Hampton battled health problems in the last decade. In May 1992, he was overcome while performing in Paris with heat exhaustion. And in 1995, he suffered two strokes within three months.

But at a 90th birthday party in 1998, Hampton was beaming as his brilliant career was celebrated by comedian Bill Cosby, fellow musical greats Betty Carter and Tito Puente, and several U.S. and foreign dignitaries.

Between engagements, he supervised various personal philanthropies, including an ear research foundation and a college scholarship endowment fund.

He also established a community development corporation which, with government support, built low- and middle-income housing in New York and Newark, N.J. One of his projects in Harlem is named for his wife, Gladys, who died in 1971 after a 35-year marriage.

The couple had no children.

Hampton served on the New York City Human Right Commission 1984-86 and in 1985 was appointed "ambassador of music" to the United Nations.

Raised a Roman Catholic, he later embraced Christian Science and was a Mason for more than half a century. He also was powerfully influenced by the State of Israel, where he performed and which inspired his "King David Suite," a 1953 four-part jazz composition for symphony orchestra.