Lionel Hampton

摘要

Had this newspaper been running an obituary page at the time, Louis Armstrong, who died in 1971, would have been a natural choice. Duke Ellington (died 1974) and Bessie Smith (died 1937) are among others who would have made it. Lionel Hampton was of that flowering, and had the good grace to live to 94- Until a few years ago he would still take to the stage with a band. Once at the piano or vibraphone, an electronic instrument he introduced to jazz, the marks of age would fall away and the sweaty passion that he had first brought to jazz back in the 1930s would be relived; and "Flying Home", his most famous composition, would soar for the hundredth, or perhaps the thousandth, time. Among the legends attached to "Flying Home" is that it depicts an American Flying Fortress bomber, damaged in a raid over Germany, with its crew urging on the aircraft as it strives to reach its base in eastern England. Listening to a recording of the number made during the second world war, with Mr Hampton's driving solos and his grunts of excitement as the pace quickens, it does seem to convey a will to win.