April 21, 1932 – November 18, 2021

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Slide Hampton is featured on a 1971 episode of the Italian TV variety show “No Network”

Trombonist Locksley Wellington “Slide” Hampton was born April 21, 1932 in Jeannette, Pennsylvania.

By 12 he was playing trombone in his family’s jazz band.

At twenty, he appeared with Lionel Hampton’s Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.

Art Blakey, Tadd Dameron, Barry Harris, Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, and Max Roach sought him out as a sideman and in 1962 he formed the Slide Hampton Octet with Booker Little, Freddie Hubbard, and George Coleman.

Locksley Wellington Hampton moved from Pennsylvania to Indianapolis with his family when he was six years old in 1938.

As a child he acquired a trombone set up for left handed musicians, and would continue to play it although he was right handed.

By the early 1940s he was performing in the “Duke Hampton Band” his family’s jazz ensemble.

After a brief period with Buddy Johnson’s R&B band in the mid-1950s he would become a member of Maynard Ferguson’s band from 1957 to 1959 ,joined where he played and arranged, such popular tunes as “Slides Derangement” and “The Fugue.”

He formed the “Slide Hampton Octet” in 1962 touring the U.S. ad Europe featuring the horns of Booker Little, George Coleman, Freddie Hubbard.

In 1968 Slide began touring with the “Woody Herman Orchestra” and remained in Europe until 1977.

After his return to the States Slide Hampton taught as an artist-in-residence at Harvard, the University of Massachusetts, De Paul University, and Indiana State University.

An instrumentalist of unique ability, during the 1980s he was leader of his own nine-trombone band the “World of Trombones.”

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