For the 100th article in my series of Jazz Profiles, this is the first time that a non-musician is the subject. John Hammond is considered by many to be the most important non musician in jazz history. As a talent scout who discovered quite a few notables, a record producer, a record company executive, and a promoter/propagandist for the music he loved, Hammond was responsible for many significant events both in jazz and popular music. His career was phenomenal in its own way, particularly considering his background.
John Hammond was born on Dec. 15, 1910 in New York. His family was quite rich, his mother was related to the Vanderbilts, an uncle was the ambassador to Spain, and his father was a banker, lawyer, and railroad executive. He had four older sisters, including Alice, who would marry Benny Goodman in 1942.
Hammond began studying piano when he was four, switching to violin four years later. While his parents enjoyed classical music, he preferred hearing the folk music performed by his family’s black servants. From an early age, Hammond believed in civil rights and integration and that would be a major driving force throughout his life. In 1923 the 12-year old first heard jazz while in London with his family, enjoying the music of the Georgians and the playing of Sidney Bechet in the show From Dixie To Broadway. Back home he became a record collector, searching for blues and jazz records in black neighborhoods. While in boarding school, he was able to occasionally visit Harlem and he had the opportunity to see Bessie Smith perform.
After graduating from high school in 1929, Hammond enrolled at Yale, studying violin and viola while getting opportunities to attend some recording sessions (due to his friendship with bassist Artie Bernstein) and vaudeville shows. He dropped out of college in 1931 because he wanted to become part of the record industry. Hammond wrote about jazz for Gramophone and soon became the US correspondent for Melody Maker. While the white American press rarely discussed African-American jazz musicians, the British were much more interested and Hammond’s familiarity with the Harlem jazz scene made him a natural for the job.
Also in 1931, Hammond was involved in his first recording session, paying for a session in which pianist Garland Wilson recorded four songs. The following year at the age of 21, he put together a band for a society party that was an integrated unit that included Fats Waller, Benny Carter, Frankie Newton, Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Condon, and Artie Bernstein. He worked at a nonpaying job as a disc jockey for a jazz radio show. Hammond booked the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra for a job and produced a record date for them later in the year that resulted in four numbers including classic versions of “Honeysuckle Rose” and “New King Porter Stomp.”
It may have been the worst years of the Great Depression and the American record industry was in shambles but Hammond used his British connections to produce classic sessions in 1933 for the English public including dates by Benny Carter, Spike Hughes, Fletcher Henderson, Joe Sullivan, Coleman Hawkins, Joe Venuti, the Horace Henderson Orchestra, the Chocolate Dandies, and Benny Goodman. As if that was not enough, he produced Bessie Smith’s last record date and Billie Holiday’s first.
While John Hammond has often been credited with “discovering” a long list of major artists, in reality most of those talents would have had careers anyway. However Hammond made a major difference in the careers of a long list of artists and, due to him, quite a bit of rewarding music was recorded that might otherwise have never come into existence. In the case of Billie Holiday, he had gone to a club in 1933 expecting to hear singer Monette Moore. Holiday was substituting for her and Hammond was enchanted by her phrasing, voice, and stage personality. Before the end of the year he had her make her recording debut as a guest on two songs with a pickup recording group led by Benny Goodman. While the numbers failed to make much of an impression, in 1935 he initiated a series of all-star sessions led by Teddy Wilson that featured Billie Holiday with a long list of swing greats; those recordings made her famous. Incidentally, a few years earlier, Hammond had heard Wilson subbing for Earl Hines on a radio broadcast. He immediately arranged for the pianist to join Benny Carter’s orchestra and that association largely launched Wilson’s career.
One of John Hammond’s strengths was his willingness to travel long distances to see little-known artists perform. He loved swinging jazz and was able to accurately gauge the potential of singers and instrumentalists. He often paid for their sessions and was rarely concerned about whether recordings would sell well as long as the music was rewarding. On the minus side, he had such strong opinions about the music that he loved that sometimes he would get too possessive and bossy in the way that he dealt with musicians. Duke Ellington, who he criticized in print in the 1940s and ’50s for not sounding like his band had in the late 1920s, largely avoided him. Still Hammond had very good taste in the musicians who he championed and ultimately did a great deal of good for the music. And throughout his life (starting in the early 1930s), he was very active in the civil rights movement.
In 1934, Hammond produced record dates by Chick Webb, Benny Goodman, Wingy Manone, Red Norvo, and Louis Prima. In 1935 he began the Teddy Wilson/Billie Holiday recordings in addition to organizing sessions headed by Red Norvo, Mildred Bailey, Gene Krupa, Meade Lux Lewis, Bud Freeman, Bunny Berigan and Teddy Wilson (piano solos), and he followed it up in 1936 by documenting Jimmie Noone, Albert Ammons, and Roy Eldridge.
Benny Goodman had decided to form his own big band in 1934. Hammond introduced him to Fletcher Henderson and suggested that Goodman use some of his arrangements. He also persuaded Gene Krupa (who had had an earlier bad experience with the clarinetist) to join the new orchestra along with his new discovery pianist Jess Stacy. Goodman’s huge success in mid-1935 might very well have not taken place without Hammond’s suggestions.
In 1936 while listening to his powerful car radio, Hammond heard Count Basie’s band for the first time broadcasting out of Kansas City. He made the mistake of writing about the group in the press. By the time he had flown to Kansas City to sign him for Brunswick, Basie had signed with the Decca label for much less generous terms than he would have been offered. Although it would be three years before Hammond got Basie a better contract, he did seize the opportunity to record a quintet from the group (as Jones-Smith Inc.) for a classic session that was Lester Young’s recording debut.
John Hammond’s enthusiasm and energy were consistently high, particularly during the last half of the 1930s. Consider that during 1936-39 he was responsible for record dates featuring Billie Holiday, Teddy Wilson, Harry James, Albert Ammons, Mildred Bailey, Count Basie (starting in 1939), Frankie Newton, and Ida Cox, not to mention Benny Goodman and a few classical dates. He was closely involved in the day-to-day operations of both the Goodman and Basie orchestras. Hammond persuaded a reluctant Goodman to give a listen to the innovative electric guitarist Charlie Christian who he had discovered in Oklahoma thanks to a tip from Mary Lou Williams.
In addition, John Hammond presented some of his favorite artists at two Carnegie Hall concerts on Dec. 23, 1938 and Dec. 24, 1939 that were called From Spirituals To Swing. While he was unable to present Bessie Smith and Robert Johnson as planned (both had passed away), it was due to these concerts, which featured pianists Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, and Meade Lux Lewis plus singer Big Joe Turner, that a boogie-woogie craze soon swept the swing world. Other highlights included Hot Lips Page sitting in with the Basie band, Sidney Bechet leading his New Orleans Feetwarmers, and Ida Cox briefly having her career revived. Albert Lion attended the 1938 concert and later credited it with inspiring him to start the Blue Note label.
John Hammond accomplished all of this in the 1930s and he was not even 30 when the decade ended. In the early 1940s he stayed busy at the Columbia label as the associate director of popular recording, making many sessions with the Benny Goodman and Count Basie bands. His music career was interrupted when he was drafted in 1942 and he was in the military for three years until early 1946. It was not a pleasant experience for him with his views on civil rights getting him into trouble several times.
Upon his discharge, Hammond felt somewhat lost. The music industry had changed, the swing era had ended, the big bands (even Benny Goodman’s) were breaking up, and Hammond never really accepted bebop. While he at first resumed his job at Columbia, when he joined the board of directors of Keynote Records, it resulted in arguments and him resigning from Columbia. Keynote, which had been a major if small jazz company under the direction of Harry Lim, was in decline so it was not a good move for Hammond. He next worked briefly for the small Majestic label and then, when Mercury bought Keynote, he switched to the parent company, mostly being involved with classical music. He just could not relate to modern jazz.
Hammond returned to jazz in 1953 when he began producing a notable series for the Vanguard label that featured mainstream swing players who were not recording all that often. The high-quality sessions, many of which have recently been reissued on two Mosaic box sets, featured the likes of Buck Clayton, Ruby Braff, Vic Dickenson, Jimmy Rushing, Mel Powell, and Jo Jones among others. He also continued to be involved with recording classical music. Hammond, whose son (also named John Hammond) became a famous blues guitarist-singer, was always interested in folk music and blues in addition to jazz and in 1957 oversaw the recording of the Newport Jazz Festival.
In 1960 he rejoined the Columbia label and, in addition to recording jazz sessions, was involved in a series of surprising discoveries and projects for the label. He discovered a young gospel singer named Aretha Franklin and tried to mold her into a new Billie Holiday on a series of jazz and blues-oriented sessions but the real Aretha Franklin did not emerge until she signed with the Atlantic label. Hammond was a major help in the early careers of Bob Dylan, George Benson, Leonard Cohen, and Bruce Springsteen. He also worked with veteran folk singer Pete Seeger, pianists Ray Bryant and Adam Makowicz, the Dukes of Dixieland, Eubie Blake, altoist John Handy, and the big bands of Don Ellis and Bill Watrous among others.
In 1967, he organized and presented a new From Spirituals To Swing concert at Carnegie Hall which was recorded and featured a variety of swing all-stars, Count Basie, Pete Johnson, Edmond Hall, Buddy Tate, Big Joe Turner and George Benson. And Hammond was also involved in many reissue box sets of the music that he had recorded during the swing era. His compilation of the recordings of Robert Johnson helped revive interest in that legendary bluesman of the 1930s.
But by the late 1960s, John Hammond’s health was gradually declining and he was slowing down. In 1975 he retired from Columbia. However he remained part of the music scene and stayed active. In 1983 he helped convince the label’s subsidiary Epic to sign blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan and he was credited as the executive producer (for the last time) on Vaughan’s first album.
On July 10, 1987, John Hammond passed away at the age of 76 after a life filled with remarkable accomplishments. He died while listening to a Billie Holiday record. His autobiography, John Hammond On Record (Ridge Press, 1977), has much more about his personal life and is well worth acquiring.
Since 1975 Scott Yanow has been a regular reviewer of albums in many jazz styles. He has written for many jazz and arts magazines, including JazzTimes, Jazziz, Down Beat, Cadence, CODA, and the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, and was the jazz editor for Record Review. He has written an in-depth biography on Dizzy Gillespie for AllMusic.com. He has authored 11 books on jazz, over 900 liner notes for CDs and over 20,000 reviews of jazz recordings.
Yanow was a contributor to and co-editor of the third edition of the All Music Guide to Jazz. He continues to write for Downbeat, Jazziz, the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, the Jazz Rag, the New York City Jazz Record and other publications.
