Хэмптон Хоуз: Жизнь и творчество джазового пианиста

American jazz pianist

Hampton Barnett Hawes Jr. (November 13, 1928 – May 22, 1977) was an American jazz pianist. He was the author of the memoir Raise Up Off Me, which won the Deems Taylor Award for music writing in 1975.

Hampton Hawes was born on November 13, 1928, in Los Angeles, California. His father, Hampton Hawes Sr., was minister of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles. by his teens he was playing with the leading jazz musicians on the West Coast, including Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Art Pepper, Shorty Rogers, and Teddy Edwards. His second professional job, at 18, was playing for eight months with the Howard McGhee Quintet at the Hi De Ho Club, in a group that included Charlie Parker. With help from inside and outside the prison, Hawes submitted an official request for a presidential pardon. In August 1963, Kennedy granted Hawes Executive Clemency, the 42nd of only 43 such pardons given in the final year of Kennedy's presidency. After being released from prison, Hawes resumed playing and recording. During a ten month tour of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, Hawes recorded nine albums, played sold out shows and concert halls in ten countries, and was covered widely in the press, including appearances on European television and radio. Raise Up Off Me, Hawes' autobiography, written with Don Asher and published in 1974, shed light on his heroin addiction, the bebop movement, and his friendships with some of the leading jazz musicians of his time. It won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for music writing in 1975. Critic Gary Giddins, who wrote the book's introduction, called Raise Up Off Me "a major contribution to the literature of jazz." The Penguin Guide to Jazz cites it as "one of the most moving memoirs ever written by a musician, and a classic of jazz writing." Hampton Hawes died unexpectedly of a brain hemorrhage in 1977, at the age of 48.

Hawes' playing style developed in the early 1950s. He included "figures used by Parker and [Bud] Powell (but he played with a cleaner articulation than Powell), some Oscar Peterson phrases, and later, some Bill Evans phrases[ ], and an impressive locked hands style in which the top notes always sang out clearly." He also helped develop "the double note blues figures and rhythmically compelling comping style that Horace Silver and others were to use in the mid 1950s." His technique featured "great facility with rapid runs and a versatile control of touch." Hawes influenced a great number of prominent pianists, including André Previn, Peterson, Horace Silver, Claude Williamson, Pete Jolly, and Toshiko Akiyoshi. Hawes' own influences came from a number of sources, including the gospel music and spirituals he heard in his father's church as a child, and the boogie woogie piano of Earl Hines. Hawes also learned much from pianists Powell and Nat King Cole, among others. By Hawes' own account, however, his principal source of influence was his friend Charlie Parker.