LearnJazzPiano.com archives: Excerpt from Hampton Hawes autobiography

Jazz+ -- 02/05/2007, 13:12:05 -- #32900

"Raise Up Off Me" (1972) Author: Hampton Hawes http://www.amazon.com/Raise-Up-Off-Me-Paperback/dp/0306801019 That excerpt was written shortly before Hampton Hawes began recording with piano, Rhodes and ARP synthesizers for Fanatasy Records in Berkeley CA in 1972.  The excerpt appears in the last chapter of his autobiography written about five years before his death in 1977. "A week after moving in with Josie I put on some of my old Bird and Tatum records for her because she'd never been exposed to jazz. I listened through two tracks of the Tatum and took it off. Put on Bird, took him off. Josie thought it was because she wasn't showing enough enthusiasm and asked for another chance. But it wasn't that. The records no longer worked for me. Never thought I'd walk away from Bird and Tatum - not that they wern't as great as they'd ever been, but their message had was deliverd a long time ago and maybe it had been heard too many time since then. A fresh, new sound  was ripping across the country. I no longer had to listen to dead giants to make me feel good."

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