A dynamic showman with an electric personality，Hampton was one of the last giants of jazz.He pioneered the use of the vibraphone as a jazz instrument and single－handedly popularized its use.
Hampton has cut hundreds of records.He was known for tremendous energy and for directing bands that were among the most long－lived and consistently popular large ensembles in jazz.His work has been hailed by everyone from presidents to jazz critics and endorsed by the public through enthusiastic attendance of his performances and unending sales of his records.Hampton was born on April 20，1908，in Louisville，Kentucky.He began working as a drummer when he was a teenager.He spent many of his formative musical years in Los Angeles，playing with top local bands and some great national figure s as they came through town.Among them were Louis Armstrong――who first encouraged him to play the vibraphone――and，later，Benny Goodman.He was one of the first musicians to bridge the racial gap between blacks and whites in jazz.He joined drummer Gene Krupa and pianist Teddy Wilson to form the multiracial3） Benny Goodman quartet in the 1930s.Hampton later recalled，“I didn't recognize that it was a social advancement，but it was the first time blacks and whites ever played together out in public.”
By 1930，he was touring extensively o n the West Coast with his own groups，making records and enjoying billing as the“fastest drummer in the world，”when he struck his first note on a vibraphone.He played with Armstrong's group for a year，establishing the vibraphone as a jazz instrument and himself as its top interpreter.
Hampton played the vibes with lightning swiftness and harmonic and melodic4） simplicity and the drums with a fierce，driving rhythm.He became a household name after recording such hits as Moon glow and Dinah with Goodman in the 1930s and continued to make the charts in the 1940s and 1950s.He kept up a torrid5） performing pace，appearing at colleges and jazz festivals across the country and on countless television variety shows.He also wrote more than 200pieces of music，including such jazz standards as Evil Gal Blues and Midnight Sun.He once estimated that he performed his best－known composition，Flyin' Home ，more than 300times a year from 1937to 1987.
In 1940，he left Goodman and started h is own big band，featuring a big sound，swinging arrangements and such soloists6） as Washington.Hampton's newly recorded big－band version of Flyin' Home became a huge success.The band specialized in boogie－woogie7），jump and later bop，and by the early 1950s it had become as much a rhythm and blues as a jazz attraction.But it nevertheless remained the medium for the introduction of many jazz talents.
Hampton dissolved the big band in 1965but continued to play with a sextet he called the Inner Circle.He remained an attraction at concerts and jazz festivals，despite ill health in his eighties.
He played into his nineties.In 1995，after suffering two strokes，he received an award for artistic excellence at Manhattan's first Jazz at Lincoln Center Awards gala，then performed a swinging rendition7） of Goodman's Air Mail Special on the vibraphone.Over the decades，Hampton was a consistent winner of annual polls as the best vibes player in the business.He won countless awards（including the Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992）and saw both a Berlin street，Hampton－street，and the music school of the University of Idaho named in his honor.
Through all of it，Hampton once said，he had just one goal：“I want to be remembered for spreading happiness and goodwill.”He did just that.
President Bush issued a statement saying that Hampton“was an American music legend and will be sorely missed.”
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