"I'm still trying to get myself together," he says almost apologetically in his rich Southern drawl. "We just got back from a six-week tour in Europe. We played all over Scandinavia, Germany, Southern France.
"When I was in Chicago this week, at the Playboy Cub, they gave me a new set of drums, with lights inside. I push a button and the whole drum lights up. I'm going to use them for Newport. This is the latest thing. It will blow their minds. We open on July first in Carnegie Hall and I'm bringing back a lot of veterans from my band."
He grew up in Chicago, but because of the gang fights in his neighborhood, Lionel's grandmother sent him to a Catholic school in Wisconsin. There a nun taught him to play the drums. The youngster learned fast; when he was 15, he made up his mind to head for the West Coast on his own, to pursue a jazz career. At the train station, he promised his grandmother that he would say his prayers and read the Bible every day.
Some 15 years later, Hampton was invited to join the Benny Goodman band in New York. His acceptance of the offer had great social significance, for it was the first time that blacks and whites played together in a major musical group.
>From 1937 to 1971 he lived in central Harlem. Then, after moving to the West Side, Hampton decided that he wanted to help upgrade his old neighborhood, so, on the advice of Governor Nelson Rockefeller, he raised $1 million in seed money and filed an application with the Urban Development Corporation for some new housing. Today there are 355 families living in the Lionel Hampton Houses at 130th Street and 8th Avenue." I was just designated the land right next to it," he says proudly. "We're going to break ground next year. It will be 250 family units, dedicated to my late wife Gladys. The Gladys Hampton Building."
A friend of many important public figures, Hampton has never lost his affection for Richard Nixon: "When I was a kid in California, President Nixon was our congressman. Then he became our senator. He was a good man and a good politician. He helped the blacks a lot; he helped the Spanish. I campaigned for him when he ran for president. … What happened with Watergate, I don't know. That's high politics. But I know I always had high esteem for him."
In a political campaign last year, Hampton threw his support behind Ernest Morial, a black man who was running for mayor of New Orleans. Before Hampton stepped in, Morial was sixth in the polls. "I sent my P.R. man Chuck Jones down there to put some life into his campaign. Chuck put a thousand placards all over town and went on all the radio stations, and I played at a Morial for Mayor music festival. He came in first in the primary and then he won the election."
My questions are finished. I get up and shake Lionel's hand, telling him that I've always loved his music. He dashes into his bedroom, bringing out four records for me to take home. He shakes my hand twice more.
On my way to the door, I ask him one last question: Does he still have time to read the Bible every day?
"Yes," he replies, grinning, "That's what I was doing when you came here and that's what I'm going to do after you leave."