Hampton's jazz was excitement, from first to last. He grew up in Birmingham and learned something about drumming from a nun at a Holiness church. He then moved to Chicago and studied drums and xylophone in a boys' band sponsored by the Chicago Defender. There were plenty of local groups who offered him a job, and eventually he went to Los Angeles with the Les Hite band, although he also worked and recorded there with Paul Howard. In 1929, he was with Hite's band when it began backing Louis Armstrong, who encouraged him on vibes, as did the dancer Gladys Riddle, whom Hampton married. His career progressed only slowly, though he led groups of his own, but it wasn't until Benny Goodman sat in with him at the Paradise Café in Los Angeles that matters began to move quickly. Goodman featured him in his new trio and quartet, and RCA Victor began recording him in all-star small-group formats, where he engaged the cream of whichever band was in town to jam alongside him. These ebullient sessions are a snapshot of many of the great swing-era players in comparatively loose and amiable frameworks, although Hampton himself, whether playing vibes, singing, thundering away at the drums or snapping off two-fingered piano features, stands as tall as anyone.

In 1940, he finally formed a big band of his own, and it persisted in one form or another for the rest of his career. For most of its long history it was something of an academy, with such as Dexter Gordon, Charles Mingus, Illinois Jacquet, Dinah Washington, Betty Carter, Wes Montgomery, Quincy Jones, Art Farmer and Clifford Brown – to pick only names from the 40s and early 50s – all getting an early break in their careers. Hampton (and Gladys, who remained a notably fearsome example of the 'jazz wife' for the rest of their marriage) ran a tough, tight ship, which contrasted somewhat with the mayhem which the Hampton band could create on stage. The touring programme could last hours, with one hellraising feature after another, and riff tunes such as Hey Ba-Ba-Re-Bop and the perennial Flying Home dominated the band's book. In some ways it was a throwback almost to vaudeville, but the musicianship on hand took it to a higher level, and none tried harder than Hamp himself. Besides, it was also prescient of what lay ahead: Oh, Rock was one prophetic title from the early 50s, and Hampton was never shy of adopting a dance craze such as The Hucklebuck. His own playing set the standard for what the vibes could do, at least in the time prior to Milt Jackson's breakthrough, and his famous extended solo on Stardust at a 1947 Gene Norman Just Jazz concert showed the extraordinary liberties he could take on a ballad feature – it became a favourite setpiece, though never a mere routine, as the surviving renditions are all different from each other. Many have complained that Hampton's rabble-rousing approach had no musical rewards beyond the band's early life, but while he gave the people what they wanted, live recordings from the 60s and 70s show that both band and leader had plenty to say to more demanding jazz fans too. By this time, the band had become a dynasty, and reunions with old sidemen were also frequent. While he still worked with the big band, Hamp also established a 12-piece group, Jazz Inner Circle, and, in the 90s, a gang of old-timers named The Golden Men of Jazz. He was close to Norman Granz for much of his recording career in the LP era, and made numerous albums with Oscar Peterson and others in the Granz elite, although he also enjoyed stints on Columbia and RCA. Away from the music, he was an activist on housing issues and used much of his own money in that direction; in addition, a staunch Republican, he campaigned for more than one presidential candidate. Honoured at the end of the century as one of the last great men of a vanished jazz era, but illness finally obliged him to leave playing behind.

Biography from Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia (2005).

If you'd like more information, check out The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (2002) or The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz (2007), both of which are still in print.