By
PETER KEEPNEWS NY Times
Chico Hamilton,
a drummer
and bandleader who helped put California on the modern-jazz map in the
1950s and remained active into the 21st century, died on Monday in
Manhattan. He was 92.
His death was announced by April Thibeault, his publicist.
Never among the flashiest or most muscular of jazz drummers, Mr.
Hamilton had a subtle and melodic approach that made him ideally suited
for the understated style that came to be known as cool jazz, of which
his hometown, Los Angeles, was the epicenter.
He was a charter member of the baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan’s
quartet, which helped lay the groundwork for the cool movement. His own
quintet, which he formed shortly after leaving the Mulligan group, came
to be regarded as the quintessence of cool. With its quiet intensity,
its intricate arrangements and its uniquely pastel instrumentation of
flute, guitar, cello, bass and drums — the flutist, Buddy Collette, also
played alto saxophone — the
Chico Hamilton Quintet became one of the most popular groups in jazz. (The cellist in that group,
Fred Katz, died in September.)
The group was a mainstay of the nightclub and jazz festival circuit and
even appeared in movies. It was prominently featured in the 1957 film
“Sweet Smell of Success,”
with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. (One character in that movie, a
guitarist played by Martin Milner, was a member of the Hamilton group on
screen, miming to the playing of the quintet’s real guitarist, John
Pisano.) And it was seen in
“Jazz on a Summer’s Day,” Bert Stern’s acclaimed documentary about the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.
Cool jazz had fallen out of favor by the mid-1960s, but by then Mr.
Hamilton had already altered the sound and style of his quintet,
replacing the cellist with a trombonist and adopting a bluesier, more
aggressive approach.
In 1966, after more personnel changes and more shifts in audience
tastes, Mr. Hamilton, no longer on top of the jazz world but
increasingly interested in composing — he wrote the music for Roman
Polanski’s 1965 film, “Repulsion” — disbanded the quintet and formed a
company that provided music for television shows and commercials.
But he continued to perform and record occasionally, and by the
mid-1970s he was back on the road as a bandleader full time. He was
never again as big a star as he had been in the 1950s, but he remained
active, and his music became increasingly difficult to categorize,
incorporating elements of free jazz, jazz-rock fusion and other styles.
He was born Foreststorn Hamilton in Los Angeles on Sept. 21, 1921. His
father, Jesse, worked at the University Club of Southern California, and
his mother, Pearl Lee Gonzales Cooley Hamilton, was a school dietitian.
Asked by Marc Myers of the website JazzWax how he got the name Chico, he
said he wasn’t sure but thought he acquired it as a teenager because “I
was always a small dude.”
While still in high school he immersed himself in the local jazz scene,
and by 1940 he was touring with Lionel Hampton’s big band. After serving
in the Army during World War II, he worked briefly with the bands of
Jimmy Mundy, Charlie Barnet and Count Basie before becoming the house
drummer at the Los Angeles nightclub Billy Berg’s in 1946.
From 1948 to 1955 he toured Europe in the summers as a member of Lena
Horne’s backup band, while playing the rest of the year in Los Angeles.
His softly propulsive playing was an essential element in the popularity
of Mulligan’s 1952 quartet, which also included Chet Baker on trumpet
but, unusually, did not have a pianist. The group helped set the
template for what came to be known as West Coast jazz, smoother and more
cerebral than its East Coast counterpart.
The high profile he achieved with Mulligan emboldened him to try his
luck as a bandleader, something fairly unusual for a drummer in the
1950s. His success was almost instantaneous.
He went on to record prolifically for a variety of labels, including
Pacific Jazz, Impulse, Columbia and Soul Note. Among the honors he
received were a National Endowment for the Arts
Jazz Masters Award in 2004 and a Kennedy Center Living Jazz Legend Award in 2007.
Although slowed by age, Mr. Hamilton continued to perform and record beyond his 90th birthday. He released an album,
“Revelation,” in 2011 on the
Joyous Shout
label, and had recently completed another one, “Inquiring Minds,”
scheduled for release in 2014. Until late last year he was appearing at
the Manhattan nightclub Drom with Euphoria, the group he had led since
1989.
Mr. Hamilton is survived by a brother, Don; a daughter, Denise Hamilton;
a granddaughter; and two great-granddaughters. His brother the actor
Bernie Hamilton, and his wife, Helen Hamilton, both died in 2008.
Mr. Hamilton was highly regarded not just for his drumming, but also as a
talent scout. Musicians who passed through his group before achieving
stardom on their own include the bassist Ron Carter, the saxophonists
Eric Dolphy and Charles Lloyd and the guitarists Jim Hall, Gabor Szabo
and Larry Coryell. In a 1992 interview with National Public Radio, the
saxophonist Eric Person, a longtime sideman, praised Mr. Hamilton for
teaching “how to work on the bandstand, how you dress onstage, how you
carry yourself in public.”
Mr. Hamilton taught those lessons as a bandleader and, for more than two decades, as a faculty member at the
New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music
in New York. Teaching young musicians, he told The Providence Journal
in Rhode Island in 2006, was “not difficult if they realize how
fortunate they are.”
“But,” he added, “if they’re on an ego trip, that’s their problem.”
Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.
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