Chico Hamilton

Chico Hamilton (b. 1921)
a.k.a. Forestorn Hamilton

CHICO IS THE MAN
Drummer Extraordinaire Chico Hamilton Is Still on the Beat
Chico Hamilton doesn't want for illustrious names to fill in his résumé. He's drummed with everyone from Billie Holiday to Duke Ellington, Lester Young to Ella Fitzgerald; his own innovative bands were stocked with superb players like Jim Hall, Eric Dolphy, and Charles Lloyd. Now in the seventh decade of his career, Hamilton has produced one of his most adventurous recordings, Foreststorn, which covers the gamut from chamber jazz to blues rock, finding room for such diverse players as Arthur Blythe, Steve Turre, John Popper, and Charlie Watts. Ted Panken spoke with the ageless percussionist about his life in music.

Barnes & Noble.com: You've been a working musician for 65 years.

Chico Hamilton: You're saying it's about time I should know something, huh!

B&N.com: Forestorn features a wide spectrum of music, and you've been active in all those different areas.

CH: My philosophy is that it takes all kinds of music to make music, and it takes all kinds of jazz to make jazz, this particular form of music. I'm a musician, and I like music.

B&N.com: In your bands you've used saxophone players who incorporated the most extreme sounds. Eric Dolphy, Buddy Collete, Charles Lloyd, Paul Horn, Steve Potts, Arthur Blythe, Eric Person, who is also on this record. Most were multi-instrumentalists and could create a wide sound palette.

CH: From the very beginning, what I had in mind always called for a multi-instrumentalist, because I liked to change up the sounds. In doing so, we built certain rhythm patterns on each particular style, the way some guy would play. As a matter of fact, with a lot of these guys, when they first came on my band (I like to refer to it as my orchestras), I would play to their weakness. Then in turn, they became stronger. Plus the fact I gave them the time to be able to hear themselves, develop themselves, and make up their mind where they wanted to go musically with their instrument. I'd just sort of guide them.Not direct them, but just guide them.

B&N.com: Youve played with some of the greatest singers: Lena Horne. Billie Holiday. Tony Bennett. Nat Cole, Sammy Davis, Billy Eckstine.

CH: I think the most unusual singer of all of them was Lena. You never knew what she was going to do. Whereas Ella Fitzgerald did a lick one night, and that meant she'd do that same lick the same way every time. So you knew where she was going. Lena would always have a different tempo and time. Of course, virtually all of these singers were easy to keep time for, because they were all good timekeepers when they'd phrase. So playing with brushes, being able to sweep and keep a beat and keep time at a decent volume was relatively easy. But what it did, it built up my listening chops, my ears, because you had to be completely aware of what was going on at all times. Nat Cole was a tremendous player to keep time for. Nat's phrasing was comparable to Louis Armstrong, as far as I was concerned. He was impeccable. He didn't have a large voice, but the way he phrased was unbelievable. He'd swing his ass off!

B&N.com: Billy Eckstine had a great band in the 1940s.

CH: B! He was something else, man. It was a pleasure to play for him. He was a swinger, man. He was really into it rhythm-wise. He was very cognizant of rhythm. Matter of fact, he was the first singer that I knew of who had a bebop drummer, which was Art Blakey, in his big band, which was unbelievable, with Dexter Gordon and Gene Ammons. I had never heard anybody play like Art Blakey in my life! Up until that time, it was a straight-ahead kind of thing; I was more or less on the Jo Jones style, DING-DIT-DA-DING on the sock cymbal. And to hear somebody say bop-BOOM-TIKKU-TIKKU.... Man, it did something to me. So the next day, at our first show [with singer-dancer Will Mastin], I tried to do that. And Mastin stopped in the middle of his dance routine and turned around and looked at me up on the bandstand, and said, "What the f--k are you doing?" So after the show was over he said, "Young man, come to my dressing room; I want to talk to you." I went to his dressing room and he said, "Young man, you've been playing so beautifully for us. What are you doing? You don't want to do that!"

B&N.com: You've created a lot of jazz history, but you've always been contemporary within your time. You've always incorporated the sound of the time within what you do but never forget about your past. How do you do that? How do you avoid the trap of nostalgia? How do you stay fresh?

CH: First of all, you stay open. I listen to all kinds of music, for one thing. I keep myself surrounded by young people. Hey, I listen to what they have to say. Also, in listening to what they have to say, I understand how they feel. All we're dealing in is human emotions. If you hear somebody play.... Just like when somebody says something and you don't like what they say, that doesn't mean that what they say is wrong. It's the same thing musically. But I've always prided myself on being contemporary anyway.

B&N.com: Any younger drummers you're particular fond of?

CH: I like Lewis Nash. I'm very impressed with him.

B&N.com: I'll read back to you a comment you made to me in 1996: "I'm into sound. I'm into making sounds or creating sounds or inventing sounds, then taking the sounds and creating a mood. The supply and then the demand, that type of thing." Does that stand for your philosophy?

CH: That's the way I still feel, man. That's what I still try to do.