This live recording of the great reed player and arranger Jimmy Hamilton was made in 1982 in St.Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands.
Hamilton here puts his unmistakable stamp on mahy of the finest jazz and pop standards--he gets into an appropriately Ellingtonian mood late in the set--as well as demonstrating the blend of blues influence and strict technique that alwais marked his reed playing.
Jimmy Hamilton (25 May 1917 – 20 September 1994) was an American jazz clarinetist, tenor saxophonist, arranger, composer, and music educator, best known for his twenty-five years with Duke Ellington.
Hamilton was born in Dillon, South Carolina, and grew up in Philadelphia. Having originally learnt to play piano and brass instruments, in the 1930s he started playing the latter in local bands, before switching to clarinet and saxophone. In 1939 he played with Lucky Millinder, Jimmy Mundy, and Bill Doggett, going on to join the Teddy Wilson sextet in 1940.
After two years with Wilson, he played with Eddie Heywood and Yank Porter.
In 1943 he replaced Barney Bigard in the Duke Ellington orchestra, and stayed with Ellington until 1968. His style was very different on his two instruments: on tenor saxophone he had an R&B sound, while on clarinet he was much more precise and correct, though fluent. He wrote some of his own material in his time with Ellington.
After he left the Ellington orchestra Hamilton played and arranged on a freelance basis, before spending the 1970s and 1980s in the Virgin Islands teaching music (though he occasionally returned to the U.S. for performances with John Carter's Clarinet Summit). On his retirement from teaching he continued to perform with his own groups from 1989 to 1990.
Hamilton died in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, at the age of seventy-seven. |
