Like
Sherlock Holmes’ story of the Giant Rat of Sumatra,
"for which the world is not yet ready,"
Colonel Bruce Hampton’s story has remained untold.
Perhaps the world is ready now....
The story began, according to the Colonel, in Oak
Ridge, Tennessee, where he was born "around the
time of the Roswell incident with four different birth
certificates." However that may be, he grew up
in Atlanta. His uncle and cousin are three-star generals,
his grandfather was a colonel, and for the first six
years of his life he was called Colonel Bruce. As
a young child he was cared for by Liza Mae, who was
born in slavery. She sang spirituals to him. He became
the first male child on his mother’s side of
the family in generations not to attend West Point.
That was then. The Colonel is now authentically and
unquestionably the Colonel in more ways than one.
Last January Georgia Governor Roy Barnes appointed
him a Lieutenant Colonel on the Governor’s Staff.
Last March Dekalb County Superior Court Judge Gail
Flake granted a petition to change the name of Bruce
Cowles Hampton to Col. Bruce Cowles Hampton.
Also last March, Signal to Noise magazine published
a superb interview or exchange between the Colonel
and another bizarre musical genius, Eugene Chadbourne.
(The four birth certificates quote is from there.)
In that dialogue the Colonel remembers the first band
he was in, "a band called the Four of Nine with
six people."
He was sixteen or seventeen, "studying to be
a preacher or an accountant. And play golf. And I
got onstage, the first night, it was absolutely magic.
And I went absolutely insane, I went, ‘This is
what I want to do!’ And for the next fifty years
it’s been nothing but trouble trying to find
pitch and key and time."
Two key events in the Colonel’s life took place
in 1969. That year Columbia released the Colonel’s
first album, the Hampton Grease Band’s Music
to Eat —— an album that sold fewer copies
than any Columbia ever released, with the exception
of one giving yoga instructions. Also in 1969, the
late music writer Bob Palmer took the Colonel, who
was then twenty-one, to Memphis, where he saw the
blues singer and guitarist Bukka White perform, among
other things, his formidable "Fixin’ to
Die."
Many are the Caucasian musicians who credit a particular
older black musician with providing inspiration and
instruction. Sam Phillips had Uncle Silas, Hank Williams
had Teetot, Jim Dickinson had Alex, the Colonel had
Liza Mae. Bukka White seems also to have been an epiphany
to the Colonel.
I’m walkin’ kind of funny
Feel like I’m fixin’ to die
I’m walkin’ kind of funny
Believe I’m fixin’ to die
Well, I don’t mind dyin’ but I
Hate to see my children cry ...
There’s a black smoke risin’
Risin’ ‘bove my head
There’s a black smoke risin’
Risin’ ‘bove my head
Well, I can’t tell Jesus
I’ll make it on my dyin’ bed
The enclosed CDs, ONE RUINED LIFE OF A BRONZE AGE
TOURIST and ARKANSAS, date from 1978 and 1987 respectively.
If you missed the LPs, as too many people did, now’s
your second chance. The music is sheer genius ——
it’s jazz, but the Colonel’s too smart to
call it that —— plus it’s a lot of
other things, such as blues and, most of, all, fun.
