Lionel Hampton

Lionel Hampton more or less invented the vibraphone as a jazz instrument. He’d started as a drummer, wandered over to a vibraphone in a recording studio in 1930, and found he could play it with a percussionist’s drive and a melodist’s ear. Nobody had really used the instrument in jazz before. He made it sing and swing.

Benny Goodman scooped him up for his pioneering small groups, putting Hampton in one of the first integrated bands to perform publicly. The quartet sides with Goodman, Teddy Wilson, and Gene Krupa are some of the most joyful jazz ever recorded, four virtuosos egging each other on.

Then he started his own big band and let the energy off the leash. A Hampton show was a happening – riff tunes that built and built, the leader pounding the vibes, sometimes leaping onto the drums, the crowd on its feet. “Flying Home” became an anthem and helped point the way toward rhythm and blues.

He kept that joy going for decades, an entertainer in the best sense, who never let showmanship dull the musicianship underneath. Few people in jazz had more fun, or shared more of it.