Scott Hamilton

A complete anomaly, tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton emerged on the music scene at the peak of the fusion movement with a sound and sensibility steeped in the Swing era tradition of such tenor giants as Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Chu Berry and Don Byas. In 1977 (the year that Weather Report dominated the airwaves with Joe Zawinul’s monster hit, “Birdland”), the 22-year-old Rhode Island native snuck in under the radar with his cryptically titled debut as a leader, Scott Hamilton Is a Good Wind Who Is Blowing Us No Ill (a title inspired by a line from the eminent jazz critic Leonard Feather, who was paraphrasing the lyric to Billie Holiday’s lament “Ill Wind” in praising the young saxophonist). Against all odds, and a deluge of synth-dominated music that prevailed at that time, Hamilton carved out a straight ahead niche for himself with his warm, lyrical tenor lines and effortless sense of swing. Years before Wynton Marsalis came along to spearhead the Young Lions movement of the 1980s, Hamilton was already rekindling an interest in acoustic jazz with his own purist approach to the music.With uncanny consistency, he has continued to release high quality, ever-swinging albums as a leader since that auspicious debut 28-years-ago. With the exception of two early albums for Famous Door Records and Progressive, he has recorded exclusively with Concord Records since 1977. Among more than 30 Concord releases, Hamilton has recorded with such heavyweights as Gerry Mulligan (1986’s Soft Lights and Sweet Music), Tommy Flanagan (1997’s After Hours), and Charlie Byrd (It’s a Wonderful World). Other frequent collaborators have included trumpeter Ruby Braff, pianist Dave McKenna and drummer Jake Hanna while he has also engaged in blowing sessions with fellow tenor saxophonists such as Al Cohn and Buddy Tate (1981’s Tour de Force), Flip Phillips (1987’s A Sound Investment), Spike Robinson and Ken Peplowski (1991’s Groovin’ High) and Harry Allen (2004’s Heavy Juice). Today, at age 50, Hamilton is as unswerving in his aesthetic as ever. A pure jazzman through and through, he remains that reliably swinging player with the pure tone, fluid delivery and uncanny sense of lyricism.“I’ve always come at it from this place,” says Hamilton, who currently spends most of his time at home in London but travels to Tokyo and to the U.S as much as he can. “I listened to jazz from the time I was a baby and I first got into the music business when I was 14- or 15-years old, playing in blues bands. And I came over to jazz gradually through that music. "Hamilton has remained a staunch advocate for a swinging style of jazz for the past thirty years. As he explains, “A lot of the first saxophone players that I listened to when I was developing were older guys. Actually, they were about the same age as I am now...guys like Illinois Jacquet, Gene Ammons and Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis. The repertoire that they played was the thing that I followed then and continue to follow today. So I never really had any experience playing either modal music or any kind of fusion music. And I never went the music school route either, so that had something to do with me sticking to this particular style of playing.”He adds, “Maybe it could’ve gone differently. There’s a lot of things I probably could’ve tried in my career, but I’ve taken the route that seemed right to me. I’d say it’s really a matter of what you get back from the music. If you’re not feeling it and you’re not feeling like you’re accomplishing something, then it would be a good reason to stop or change your direction.”