R.I.P., Col. Bruce Hampton!

[lethalweapon3]

Last year, Prince played his last full concert performance at the Fox Theatre. This year, there was an influential local legend making his last riff there...

http://music.blog.ajc.com/2017/05/02/col-bruce-hampton-dies-hours-after-70th-birthday-celebration-at-the-fox-theatre/

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Hours after a star-studded birthday celebration at the Fox Theatre Monday night, Col. Bruce Hampton passed away.

Atlanta’s “Granddaddy of the Jam Scene” turned 70 on April 30 and performed at the “Hampton 70” gathering in his honor.

http://www.creativeloafing.com/music/article/20860044/col-bruce-hampton-19472017

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The Col., born Gustav Valentine Berglund III, was surrounded by an all-star lineup featuring members of Phish, R.E.M., Widespread Panic and more, who had assembled to celebrate Hampton’s 70th birthday. While nearing the end of “Turn On Your Lovelight,” Hampton lied down on stage as he often does. But soon it was clear that it wasn’t one of his typical pranks.

"PatHatcher" and several other YouTubers have posted video of Hampton's final performance at the Fox alongside his friends on "Lovelight", but out of respect I won't post it here. The band and singers played on through the end of the set after he collapsed, unaware he was not merely pranking, as CL noted.

From the Loaf article about Hampton and the upcoming concert...

http://www.creativeloafing.com/music/article/20858872/col-bruce-hamptons-allstar-tribute

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Over the course of six decades, Hampton, who turns 70 on April 30, has led a series of genre-melding avant-garde, Southern rock, R&B and jazz aggregations under monikers such as Fiji Mariners, the Codetalkers, Quark Alliance, Pharoah Gummint and Madrid Express. Best known of the bunch is the Aquarium Rescue Unit, which provided a heaping dose of surrealistically swinging impetus to the jam band movement of the 1990s. Across these myriad endeavors, the Colonel established a reputation for championing in-the-moment improvisational performance and catapulting the careers of wunderkind musicians including founding Aquarium Rescue Unit members O’Teil Burbridge (Dead & Co., Allman Brothers) and Jimmy Herring (Jazz is Dead, Phil Lesh & Friends).

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“It’s not possible,” Hampton says when asked how all of this is possible. “Nobody is in a band, driving and flying around the country at 70 years old. No one is crazy enough to do that.”

Hampton says his earliest musical collaboration occurred when he was a teenaged basketball player at Dykes High School. “I wore a coat and tie to a game with one sleeve painted bright yellow,” he says. “All I could do was hit 30-foot hook shots. No defense, no jump shots, just crazy hook shots. After the game, a friend of mine named Harold Kelling, who was a guitarist, said, ‘You need to come to our gig.’”

Kelling’s gig was with Tommy & the Nightbeats, a fairly typical garage-rock-rhythm-and-soul band of the era. Soon after Hampton joined, Tommy & the Nightbeats became the IV of IX. The band’s first engagement with Hampton was opening for Johnny and Edgar Winter’s Black Plague. At the second gig, the IV of IX opened for Otis Redding at a Georgia Tech fraternity party. “That scared me so bad I’m still trembling,” Hampton says. “I was watching Otis and thinking, ‘So that’s the way it’s done.’”

From such humble beginnings a seed was sown, which grew to become the Hampton Grease Band. Featuring Hampton, Kelling and guitarist Glenn Phillips, another Dykes alumni, Jerry Fields (drums) and Mike Holbrook (bass), the Grease Band was a phenomena of the psychedelic ’60s and one of the most influential musical forces Atlanta has ever produced.

The rest, as they say, is history. “When I turned 55, my great-uncle said, ‘OK, you’re going to quit, right?’” Hampton says. “I said, ‘Not quite, but I’m definitely going to lay back. Since then, I’ve worked more and harder than I ever did before.”

 

Trailer for the 2012 documentary on Col. Bruce...

~lw3

[macdaddy]

I can't believe this.   I was already hating that i was missing this show being out of town but this is just beyond comprehension for me.   The guy was a true legend and original like no other.   Atlanta just took one more major step toward being a much different place.