Chico Hamilton, Drums | 1921-2013

Chico Hamilton was born Foreststorn Hamilton in Los Angeles on 20 September 1921, started playing drums at Jefferson High School alongside future jazz luminaries Charles Mingus, Dexter Gordon, Illinois Jacquet and Buddy Collette, and spent the early part of his career working through the breadth of American popular music: Lionel Hampton, brief stints with Count Basie and Lester Young, six years as Lena Horne's drummer on and off. In 1952, a gap in Horne's European touring gave him time to join the Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Chet Baker, the pianoless group whose light Pacific Jazz recordings redefined what a small jazz ensemble could sound like. In 1955 he formed his own quintet with an instrumentation that had no jazz precedent: cello, flute and reeds, guitar, bass and drums. The quintet appeared in Alexander Mackendrick's 1957 film "Sweet Smell of Success" and at the Newport Jazz Festival filmed as "Jazz on a Summer's Day" (1958), bringing Hamilton wide public exposure. His 1962 second quintet, with Charles Lloyd on tenor saxophone and flute, Gabor Szabo on guitar, George Bohanon on trombone and Albert Stinson on bass, moved toward harder-edged territory. Subsequent editions of his group became a talent incubator: Ron Carter, Larry Coryell, Arthur Blythe and Paul Horn all passed through. He moved to New York in 1966, pursued film and television scoring, helped found the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, and led bands into his nineties. Hamilton died in New York on 25 November 2013, aged 92.