Lionel Hampton
Live In Paris

An album that is a little gem, yet it has never been reissued since 1973, exists “only” on double LP, and you have to look for it among used records (unless you happen to find a 1990 CD reproduction by Accord, which, however, is bootlegged). A 1956 concert at the Olympia in Paris, back then a temple of jazz and “exotic” music as well as international stars: and without a doubt, Lionel Hampton was in all these categories, but “Live in Paris” is one of the few records that when listened to, make you jump in your seat and verify the recording date multiple times.

The fact is, in the Fifties, they had as much fun as we do, if not more: the world was not as well-known and globalized, different cultures and music were all somewhat “exotica” (from Rodrigo to Yma Sumac, from Reinhardt to Sinatra). The emerging rock and roll phenomenon (Little Richard arrived before Elvis) seemed like a quirk of hysterical teenagers, and jazz in Europe still sounded like indigenous stuff, used in a vaguely scenographic and tribal sense. Cool jazz was born in 1949 but for many years would remain out of the big entertainment circuit, too formal, too intellectual, and rarefied (it would be favored by Kerouac and Ginsberg). In Europe, only the more choreographic jazz and world music would arrive (including that old fox Louis Armstrong), and Hampton showcases a wild band, in which the enveloping and still unusual sound of his powerful vibraphone is supported by a rhythm section that seems like that of Grand Funk twenty years later, mutatis mutandis. The liner notes explicitly mention a “rock’n’roll mood”, the trumpets are blaring, and the guitar sounds like Wes Montgomery, and there's a hell of a drum from the first few minutes, and when the show closes, musicians and the audience are keeping time with shouts worthy of a rowdy show, like J. Geils Band or Slade if you know what I mean. With that enchanted vibraphone, he could play Bach like the Modern Jazz Quartet would later do, and he sometimes does so wonderfully, yet his band isn't in tuxedos, and the audience isn't sitting quietly listening; they’re making noise like at concerts of Kim Fowley or Liberace (another Paris and Las Vegas favorite we should explore someday).

In short: after listening to Stray Cats, Working Week, Robert Gordon, or Style Council, we might feel like looking for the originals and having a blast with Jerry Lee Lewis or Hank Williams, or the scorching jazz from which “Land Of 1000 Dances” or “Sex Machine” will emerge, or the transformed blues of Albert Lee or B.B. King. Lionel Hampton was a great jazz figure, played in Benny Goodman's band (thus with Gene Krupa) and with Mingus, Art Farmer, Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz, and Quincy Jones; he learned to keep up with that racing locomotive that was Bird, and maybe it all started from there, passing through Davis and Coltrane's urgency. It’s not the jazz that changed the world, it’s not “Bitches Brew,” but it's still the testimony of a period when the groove could be everywhere and had the virtue of making the audience jump in time, exactly in 1956.