bruce hampton – laopan888

Bruce Hampton died on stage doing an encore at his 70^th Birthday show in the Fox Theater. Writers (who obviously knew very little about him or his music) have been reaching for things to say, mischievous, mystifying (Robert Palmer), unusual, surrealist. Only Ben Ratliff mentioned Dada which for my money is the best way to describe his work. Patriarch of the jam band scene? My memories don’t exactly match that, like Hampton with the Geese Band (Karl Ratzer and Al Nicholson) in the seventies at the Lighthouse on Peachtree just above Tenth, Hampton bolting out the door quick as a squirrel (it was right next to the bandstand)when someone in the audience shot another patron—he’d seen the muzzle flash and was out of there. Or rolling out the slide guitar-mandolin for an extended solo. Or out at Cable Dekalb passing a make-believe roach to some bold fellow trying to interview him. Pity anyone crazy enough to get up on the stage with him, his wit was deadly, he’d learn your laugh the first time he heard it and play it back to you perfectly for as long as you’d stay up there.

Thing about it was, you never ever knew what you were going to get with him: when it was good it was like nothing you’d ever dreamed, when it wasn’t, well, it wasn’t. So what? He never did the same thing twice, he was funny and he was amazing. He could get the craziest people to play together—and he always had great bands: the guitarists he played were always awesome, beginning with the Grease Band’s Howard Kelling and Glen Phillips. It’s sad to see him gone, but as many have said, if it had to be, this is the way he’d have wanted it, on stage, performing a Bobby Bland song with his friends.

Here’s a little taste of some classic work. I don’t have a copy of the Grease Band’s “Music to Eat” Album, so I’ve included a youtube link to Halifax.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVDOZ9IIFIo

Jack the Rabbit, from Strange Voices. This was a standby beginning with the Geese Band in the seventies