MOSCOW, Idaho, Feb. 25,
2002 -- Lionel Hampton, making what everybody said was probably his
last appearance at the jazz festival bearing his name, sat still and frail
behind his vibraharp for a long time.
At his back, his customary rip-roaring big band, like the ones he's been
leading all over the world for 50 years, raised the roof.
Quincy Jones had just been seen on a huge screen, thanking Hamp for giving
him his start in the Hampton trumpet section, which like the other sections was
to provide home schooling for many of the greatest players in jazz.
Hamp just sat there as a couple of swinging numbers passed, and as the band
warmed up, so did Hamp's 93-year-old limbs, though it was barely perceptible at
first.
Then the saxes took up the eight-to-the-bar opening of his signature
"Hamp's Boogie-woogie," and the withered right hand raised a mallet
above the bars of his instrument. And before long, a grin struggled across his
face, the mallet started to strike, and the tens of thousands filling the Kibbie
Dome at the University of Idaho began to cheer.
Soon the venerable "Flying Home"
was resounding to close the show
as well as the four-day festival that has been bracing Moscow's early springs
for the past 18 years.
Now dozens of the exciting instrumentalists who had been enlivening the stage
all week marched out behind Hamp, seesawing their horns in a most exciting way.
Hamp refused to quit. He tried to push his wheelchair back so that he could
stand and play, but a minder pushed it back. He just kept on trucking till it
was all over and then some.
Like Hamp, this had been an all-stalwart event, and at the top of the list in
that category was the house rhythm section, led by pianist Mulgrew Miller, a
counterpuncher who would not be topped no matter how brilliant the soloist.
Bassist John Clayton did not let any grass grow under his feet either, and Lewis
Nash put the power behind hour after hour of instrumentalists great and small.
Bucky Pizzarelli provided the four-four chording that brought about an
irresistible rock-solid swing when some of the big dogs demanded first-class
accommodations.
The great ones, if not the big stars, were abundant. Roy Hargrove and David
"Fathead" Newman gave the crowd one of the more electrifying moments
Thursday with a performance of "The Very Thought of You," during which
Hargrove broke your heart on flugel and Newman put it back together and broke it
again on tenor saxophone.
Newman had helped the great Clark Terry to the stage, and the sound Terry got
on his flugel playing "The Nearness of You" was the prettiest thing of
the week. He and Newman warmed the hearts rather than breaking them, a feat that
is second nature to these two stalwarts whose careers go back to Duke Ellington
and the early Ray Charles.
Singer-of-the-moment Jane Monheit tossed her fiery mane and made the most of
her bare shoulders as she went up there with "Over the Rainbow." But
she's stone Broadway and doesn't try for the candor of another Hampfest-bred
thrush, Diana Krall.
The great bassist Ray Brown brought along a couple of firebrands from his own
furnace, pianist Larry Fuller and drummer Karriem Riggins, who supported him
rather than the other way around as they saluted Ellington with a stirring
medley that concluded with the 50-year-old romper "Squatty Roo."
Pete Candoli
Pete Candoli, the veteran big-band first trumpeter, led a tribute to his
younger brother, Conte, who died in December, telling the crowd, "I thank
you for being here in Conte's honor."
Bud Shank, the alto man who played alongside Count in the West Coast Jazz
days when they were both among Shelley Manne's Men, played a number Conte had
written, "Secret Passion," with the passion for which he is known.
Bud Shank
It was a fierce nostalgia that drove him, but the rest of the soloists
honoring Conte -- such guys as trumpeter Claudio Roditi, trombonist Bill
Watrous, Russian violinist David Goloshchokin, Russian tenor saxman Igor Butman
and young trumpet lion Hargrove -- were no more than usually fierce. Hargrove
set a riff behind the soloists, an old-fashioned practice that Count used to
favor.
