by Rob Turner

Colonel Bruce  Hampton is one of the most vital musicians in the jamband world.  He has  been performing music for over 35 years, and he has lived a thousand lifetimes.   He is a man of wisdom, but he tempers it with a very down to Earth persona.   He has a kind of lighthearted brilliance about him that makes you want  to sit there and talk to him for days.  He is also responsible for shining light on some of  the most respected musicians on the scene today.  Oteil Burbridge,  Jimmy Herring,  Rev. Jeff  Mosier, and Jeff Sipe all achieved their initial notoriety from  their association with The Colonel in the seminal jazz-rock-theatrical  band Aquarium Rescue Unit which  flourished in the nineties.  The influence of this band is as great  today as it ever was.

The Colonel's influence stretches back to the sixties, when his  bands Four of Nine  and the the Hampton Grease Band each would   travel around to stun music audiences nightly.  His recent bands,  Fiji Mariners  and Planet Zambee,  brought attention to more impressive musicians, most notably Dr. Dan Matrazzo and Barry Richman. 

Colonel Bruce's  current band, The Code Talkers, may be the one to bring him the fame that  he has seemed to intentionally avoid for all these years. I haven't seen them since February, but reports of their recent performances indicate that  this band will be a force in the second half of this year.  Personally,  I am particularly excited about the Colonel's relatively new bandmate  Bobby Lee Rodgers, who is  a songwriter that will leave a large mark on the music world by the time  he's done, not to mention a smart and lively lead banjo/guitar player. 

The Colonel truly plays  music for the love of it, and he seems disinterested in, perhaps  even aggravated by the fame that comes along with it.  He generously let  me pepper him with questions for as long as I wanted, even though he was  about to head out to the Carolinas for a little vacation.

The upcoming Code Talkers shows include a rare trip back to Colorado to perform at the Gothic Theater in Englewood July 6, and the Fox Theater in Boulder July 8.  The band will be joined by Oteil at these shows, and don't be surprised if other big musicians show up to play!  The Colonel doesn't travel to the other side of the Mississippi much anymore, so I would *highly* recommend that the soulful Colorado folks make it out to catch the Colonel's incredible new band.

RST - I was wondering if the  name Code Talkers was influenced at all by the Navajo Indians who developed a code for our soldiers during...

CBH - ...No, not at all.  But  that's been said by everybody who has asked.  It has nothing to do  with it.  It's a code we've established when we talk in the van.  It's like  a language we have of our own.  I mean you just get mental illness after  you spend two weeks together or a week together.  Most bands become  mentally ill, and you start talking in code. Everything has a code.  It just is our own way of speaking.

RST - I find it interesting  nonetheless that when I read about these Navajo Indians known as "Code  Talkers" and I find out that subtle shifts in nasality, tone, and pitch  were used to affect the meaning of their codes, kind of like what happens when you're singing.

CBH - It's actually rather oblique stuff, and it's just sort of like our  inside joke.  But that's interesting, I don't know that much  about them other than what people have told me.

RST - Well you didn't  know much about Fiji before the Fiji Mariners, maybe you'll.

CBH - Right! (laughs)  You know they're having a war there now.

RST - One last thing on  the Navajos before we move on, you are known for your nicknames.

CBH - I'm the master of  that; I do one thing well on this planet and that's give good nicknames.   Most people think Oteil's a nickname, that's what I find hilarious.

RST - His parents get credit for that one!

CBH - Yeah, his parents gave him that one (laughs), but everybody  says I made it up which I feel honored about.

RST - Well the Navajo's four rules for code words could just as  easily be rules for your nicknames.

CBH - Tell me, tell me, tell me.

RST - The first is that they must have a logical connection to  the actual word.  They also must be unusually descriptive or creative to  make memorization easier.  The third is that they must be short.

CBH - Yep

RST - And the fourth they must avoid words that are confused with others.

CBH - Wow, I love that!

RST - So, where did you find Cheryl Renee (an amazing singer  who has performed with Code Talkers recently)?

CBH - She's in the Super Choir.  She mostly does gospel music.   She's unknown to much of the world, but to me she's the greatest singer  who ever lived bar none.  She's just it.  The Super Choir is *the* great  gospel choir, led by Reverend Oliver Wells.  I mean they tear down  roofs. Houses tumble when they sing.

RST - Will she come on the road with you?

CBH - No, not until later.  She's got kids; it's just too hard for  her to tour right now.  It's also too hard for us; we're traveling in a van.   We don't have the space right now.  Later on, in the fall or something  when the record comes out, we'll get her to do a lot of Southern dates.

RST - And then there's Nick Buda.

CBH - Nick Buda, yeah, better known as Zito.

RST - Did you dub him that?

CBH - Yeah, that's his nickname.

RST - He's from Capetown, South Africa?

CBH - Yeah, He's from Capetown, South Africa via Boston (chuckles).

RST - Did you find him in the Boston music scene?

CBH - No actually Bobby Lee Rodgers found him.  He had been in Boston  for about four years and Bobby knew of him.

RST - From his Berklee days?

CBH - Right.

RST - And "Trombetta The Coconut Man" is that another nickname you  came up with?

CBH - Yeah, and his real name is Ted Pecchio.  He was playing in  the funk scene.  He's played with Bernie Worrell and a bunch of other folks.

RST - And of course Reggie, (Wooten, guitarist and older brother  of Victor) is he going to play more with you or was that just a "one off?"

CBH - Yep, he's going to play more with us, just when he's  available. He's one of the masters of guitar, if not *the* master of  guitar.  He taught Victor Wooten, Jimmy Herring, and Oteil Burbridge.

RST - And like Jimmy, he can play very fast without sounding  gratuitous, and still play clean.

CBH - Yes, he plays fast... blinding speed!  Yeah.

RST - I am knocked over impressed with mate Bobby Lee Rodgers.   I had no idea he worked with Sting, when did he do that?

CBH - I don't know the years.  He also worked with McCoy Tyner  and The Heath Brothers.  I don't know the years, but I think he played  a number of gigs with him.  I don't think he worked with Sting on a regular basis.

RST - How many Bobby Lee songs are currently in the Code Talker rotation?

CBH - We're trying to use all of 'em!  We got about twenty of  mine, and we're learning' all of his which number in the fifties.  We're  rehearsing them every day and we've recorded almost all of his songs.   I made him record them.  I said, 'man, you're the best songwriter in  the United States.  We need all of these recorded.'  I've recorded 13  albums, I want all of *your* stuff.  I'll do one or two, maybe.  But I want  this album to be his album.  I want to introduce the world to this guy.   It's just crazy that he's not heard.  He's one of the best songwriters of  the world right now.

RST - He uses imagery very well.

CBH - He sure does!  He's also not as oblique as I am.  I like  the communication in his tunes.  They are just simple and beautiful,  and (a word that we hasten to use in the year 2000), melodic!  It seems  melody left in about 1973, and went somewhere.  I don't know where it  went.  I just don't hear melody in anything anymore, and he certainly has tons of it.

RST - How much do the Code Talkers improvise on stage?

CBH - There's improvisation inside the tunes.  We're a  jazz band masquerading as a rock band.  We might do a solid hour  of just improvisation at times, and then there might be none for  an hour.  It depends on the tune and the structure of the tune.  They're  different every day no matter what.  We try to set different tempos and  change the key a lot - just keep it fresh every day.  But to me, I'd be  satisfied with doin' one note and one chord.  I'd never get bored.  One  note's all right with me, if everybody would be into it.

RST - As long as it's coming from the right place, right?

CBH - Right,  time, space, tone, and intention is music to me.  If you can "drop the brick"  right, and catch the moment of "dropping the brick" then you've done it.

RST - I think intention  is everything, there's an intangible there that is vital to how a performance  hits me.  There are some nights I walk out of show, and a group has moved  me, and I'm not sure why, and I wasn't expecting the artist to have such  a profound effect on me.  The only thing I can point my finger to is  that there must be some purity to what they're doing.

CBH - Yeah, it's the intention.  I  know groups that aren't that good, but their intention kills me!  I'd rather  go see them than a "good group." Just 'cause they have intention.  I won't name names.

RST - I won't put you on the spot. Let's shift gears and go back in time. Do you have any memories of Four of Nine?

CBH - I have memories, it was thirty-seven  years ago.  There were six people in it, and that's where I started in  the music business.  We were wild and crazy teenagers, completely insane.   We drove an unmarked police car with a painting on the side of it, and it  was pulling a trailer with garbage cans nailed to it.  We would nail band  members to the back of it and they would ride in it.  It had a thousand  coats of paint on it.  This is pre-Beatles and pre-hippies and we wore eye  patches and orange Day-Glo jackets.  Nobody knew quite what to think.  It  was the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test years before it happened.  And there was no acid involved either.

RST - Did you and the guitar player from that  band conceive the Hampton Grease Band together?

CBH - More or less.  He was to me the leader of it.  His name is Harold Kelly.  He's the one that   pulled me into this stuff.  He saw me out playing basketball every day  in a sport coat.  It had a yellow sleeve painted.  He just thought I was  the weirdest guy he had ever seen.  He just said, "Man you want to come  sing?"  And it was like asking you if you want to go do brain surgery. 

RST - I've heard that The Grateful  Dead opened for Hampton Grease Band once, is this true?

CBH - There was a show with The Allman  Brothers, The Grateful Dead, and The Hampton Grease Band.  I think we were all billed basically together.

RST - But you took the stage after The Dead performed, right?

CBH - Man, it's been over 32 years, I  can't remember to be honest.  We probably went on first, they were a  little bit known at the time.  I know there were no more than 500 people  there though.  It was like three bucks a head, and it went on for like 12 or 14 hours. 

RST - Do you remember what the venue was?

CBH - Yeah, oh exactly, it was The  Sports Arena.  That was on Chester Avenue in Atlanta.  Long since gone.

RST - How do you think The Hampton  Grease Band would be received if it had hit the music scene today as opposed to when it did?

CBH - Very well!  I think it would do  very well today.  It was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  People just didn't get it.

RST - While we're in this time period,  I was wondering if I could ask your memories on a few musicians?

CBH - Sure!

RST - I've only been seeing shows for  about twenty years.  When I talk to true veterans of music who have been  seeing shows for thirty or forty years so many of them comment on the  intensity of Otis Redding's performances, and they say his guitar player Johnny Jenkins.

CBH - ...the greatest thing I've ever  seen in my life - scary was the word on that.  That was the shit.  That  was the stuff.  That was it.  I saw 'em twice.  Johnny Jenkins still plays  once in a while; he came out and played with us (recently).  He did seven  songs, which is the longest he's done in thirty years.  Having him and Otis  Redding together, there's been nothing like it since.  It was an energy that  does not exist today. You cannot find what they did live.   There's no way  to describe what it was... scary.  You know Bill Graham said, "I did over  three thousand acts and none were close to Otis Redding."  That's quite a  compliment, isn't it?

RST - Oh yeah!  There's a guy who's been a DJ  in Boston for over thirty years named Charles Laquidara.

CBH - Yeah, I know him.

RST - He said that Otis Redding at Monterey  was the most powerful thing he had ever seen, and this guy has seen a staggering amount of music.

CBH - Yeah, I saw Otis here in small clubs.   I'll tell you something, man, it was the scariest thing I've ever seen  in my life.  It was like, energy levels you don't even know about.  I mean,  they're not here anymore, they don't exist.  It was just like.... it  was possession.  I mean that room would change colors man, it was like a  drug.  It was a religious experience to say the least.

RST - What were the crowds like?  Would it be hard to  get into the shows? Did they sell out and stuff?

CBH - I was one of the only white guys there.  At the  time Allen Walden was managing them.  There might have been five white  people there, no not even that many, three maybe.  I was a teenager at the  time.  Otis Redding and Bobby Bland would play shows together and I knew  Wayne Bennett, the guitar player for Bobby.  He would sneak me in.  And,  I guess I would also go to the City Auditorium, occasionally, I don't  even know how I got in there.  It would be Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin,  Albert King, Sam and Dave, Solomon Burke, and it would be three bucks to  get in.  There would be three thousand people in there.  It was amazing,  that's all I can say.  Nobody was close to Otis Redding, and Johnny  Jenkins, that was it, the original group.  I saw 'em at a frat party once.   It was scary, that's all I can tell you.  I saw 'em at the Royal Peacock  in Atlanta, 181 1/2 Peacock Avenue.  (RST note - I guess he saw him more  than twice?) Still to this day, that ranks as my top concert I've ever seen.   That ruined my life and changed my life.  That made me quit golf!    (Laughter) I knew I had to do music after that day.  That was it.

RST - Do you remember when you first met Frank Zappa?

CBH - Yes, I met Frank in New York.  I had no idea who he was.   It was the mid-sixties; he had just gotten there from LA.  I was at a  place called The Tin Angel on Bleeker Street, which was across the street from the Garrick Theater, and in he walked, and I just said, 'what  a weird poot that guy is.'  I mean, this guy had long hair down to his  knees.  I had never seen anything like that coming from the South in the  sixties.

He was just, you know *freaked out* looking.  I looked at him,  but I didn't say anything, I was just like, 'that guy is poofed out.'   I mean I really didn't like him.  I was in the Blues Police or the Jazz  Police at the time.  I wasn't open to any weirdness at all.  It had to be  avant garde, or it had to be blues or R+B.  So then the next day I was  at another place on Bleeker Street called the Dugout, I think it's  still there.  You know, a sandwich place, or a bar, and we were eatin'.   He came in again at about the same time, 'round noon or something.   I was talking to my friend.  I was talking about a Polish composer  named Krysztof Penderecki, and    he heard me, and he went, "Penderecki?!"  And I turned to him and said,  'yeah, do you know who he is?'  And he goes, "yeah, very well, I have  all of his stuff."  He sort of invited us to his house, and we came over.   We ended up hanging out every day for about a week or so.  We went to his  shows, and the first show I heard I really didn't like it at all.  I just  didn't like it a bit.  The second show I went to, I thought, 'man this guy  is putting Stravinsky to rock n' roll. He's truly mixing classical music  and every influence there is.'  I really, really liked it the second  time I went and I was more open.  The musicianship and the whole thing was  just amazing.  Frank was such a gentleman it was unbelievable.  It  actually fried me that anybody could be that gentlemanly.  I didn't know  that people could be that nice.  He wasn't anybody at the time, he had no  name.  I haven't told this story to many people, but one time we were walking  through Washington Square Park, and there was this girl crying.  He went  twenty feet out of his way, and went over there to this 18 year old girl  and cheered her up, spent ten minutes with her, had no idea who she was.   In New York no one will ever do that for anyone.  And I just said, 'what  an amazing guy.'  And then we went out one night to hear Jimi Hendrix, and  he was supposed to be on the guest list, and he wasn't, and he never used  his ego and insist that he should have been on the guest list or anything.   He just paid for himself and me to get in and never said a word.  He just  always showed class all the time.  He was a big inspiration to me as a  person more than anything else.  He always helped me quite a bit.  If I had  an album out, he would play it on radio stations for me.  Especially the  album "One Ruined Life Of A Bronze Tourist."  He took that to many, many  radio stations, and helped me quite a bit.

RST - That was The Late Bronze Band?

CBH - No, that was my own album.  It was Hampton B.  Coles, I think it's under Col. Bruce Hampton now.  They're re-releasing  it July.  "One Ruined Life Of A Bronze Tourist" is the name of it.

RST - What record label will it be re-released on?

CBH - It's on Terminus Records.

RST - OK.

CBH - The guy was nothing but a class gentleman.  I  really sort of lost touch after about 1980, I only saw him one or two more  times.  But during the sixties and seventies I stayed very tight with him.   I got to do cameo appearances on "We're Only In It For The Money," and  "Lumpy Gravy." He was just a class, class cat.  I wish the world were full  with him.  He was just amazing, what did he do 50 albums, and he had four  kids?  I mean, my God!  (laughs)  An amazing cat to say the least.   He never ran out of energy, man!

RST - And what a guy to see Hendrix with!

CBH - Yeah, that's true.  We saw Hendrix stick his guitar  up through the roof.  His guitar was moving back and forth with the strings  hittin' it. It was quite amazing.  I had no idea who the guy was, and Frank  took me to see him.  He was in a little club; it was called The Dom.   Richie Havens was the closer, and Hendrix was the opener, it started  at seven in the evening, and Richie came on at about nine o'clock.  It was  like a dollar and a quarter.  And another funny story, since we're  telling war stories, is about Miles Davis.  I guess it was about 1968 when  Miles Davis was ah....right in the period where jazz was truly dead,  nobody was going to see him, and "Bitches Brew" was out.  One Sunday night  we went to the Café A Go-Go, it was like a buck to get in.  You had to  buy two drinks.  He had everybody I wanted to see Jack DeJohnette, Keith  Jarrett or Herbie Hancock was in the band.  I couldn't wait.  Then they  announced that a comedian was coming on and I got really upset.  I didn't  want to see any comedian.  It turned out to be Richard Pryor, and it was  his first New York show.  After that, I didn't want to see Miles Davis  or anybody.  Back then nobody knew what a comedian was; there was no  such thing.  They would just send some guy from the "Borsch Belt" or  something.  You didn't want to see comedians.  But Richard Pryor  in the late sixties, that was it too (laughs).

RST - He would work the whole stage, and he was pretty explosive I've heard.

CBH - UN-BELIEVABLE,  is the only word I can say.  That was still the greatest I've ever seen,  for comedy, although Chris Rock is great today. It was unheard of what Pryor  was doing at the time, I mean he broke ground.  You know what's also  funny as hell, I'm sitting' here looking at a paper and the headline says, "Unrest in Fiji!"

RST - How about Duane Allman?

CBH - Without Duane, I probably  wouldn't be in the business.  I owe that guy everything.  He got us the  record deal, the Pop Festival, the Fillmore East gigs, and was  always an inspiration.  I guess we played with the original Allman Brothers a  good 15-20 times.  He took the Hampton Grease Band to Capricorn Records  and saw to it that we got the record deal.

(RST note - I have since learned that when  Duane was so impressed with the Hampton Grease Band that he compelled  Bill Graham to book them, which resulted in HGB opening for Frank Zappa at Fillmore East in 1971)

RST - What was Duane like off-stage?

CBH - He was just a nice, quiet gentleman.   I hung out and talked with him, mostly about Blind Willie McTell.   He  played with the Isley Brothers and Little Richard in the mid-sixties.   Duane actually got fired by Little Richard here in the mid-sixties for out-dressing him. 

RST - How much would he get to actually take solos back then?

CBH - Not really much, he'd take a couple.  He  wasn't the Duane Allman that he would later become.  I couldn't even  recognize him when I went to New York and saw him years later.  By that time  he was on fire, he had really become an amazing player.  I owe Duane Allman  and Frank Zappa a lot, they both older brothers to me.  Just amazing people to say the least.  I wish Duane had lived, it would've been  a different world for The Allmans.  He was just finding his own self.   He was just coming into who he was.  He was gonna revolutionize a lot of stuff. 

RST - You would have to wonder what he would think  that his band is still popular today.

CBH - Well, they're pure man; they're pure as hell.   I guess you've heard the news that Jimmy is taking Dickey's place.

RST - uh-huh.

CBH - OK, what was the next question.

(RST note to ABB fans - I got the impression Bruce  didn't want to discuss this matter, my apologies)

RST - One last name from the past, David Earl Johnson

CBH - That's another big brother figure.  I met  David in the mid-seventies.  He was a conga player.  He had  played with all the jazz greats.  He was in bands with Jan Hammer, John  Ambercrombie, Herbie Mann; he played with just about everybody.  He was an  incredible composer and a great conga player, and one great friend.  He died  about a year and a half ago.  I miss him a lot.  We wrote a couple of  tunes together, he was an amazing cat.  I wish the world had known him, they  just don't know him.  He has a couple of German records out.  He wrote  the tune, "Time Is Free", and "Trondossa", which ARU recorded.  The world  will soon discover this amazing cat, I hope.  He put Latin and Rock n' Roll  together and made it work.

RST - Is it true "Trondossa" was inspired by a woman who  worked at Waffle House?

CBH - Yeah, how'd you know that?

RST - You have played with so many incredible musicians,  I found it interesting how excited you seemed to be to perform with  Vassar Clements at last year's Harvest Festival, can you talk about him a bit?

CBH - I was in Nashville last week and I got to talk to him.   He's the "king of kings" man.  You know that guy was with Bill Monroe  and Hank Williams when he was 14!  I mean, what kind of resume is that!   He was with the guy that started bluegrass and country and western  (laughter) that says a lot doesn't it?

RST - It's amazing, and to be completely down to Earth about it.

CBH - Yeah, Vassar's is just the nicest guy there is.

RST - From speaking with you and reading about you, I've  learned that one of the first things that lured you toward music was a blues  radio program back in the your younger days, do you remember the name of  this show or the station it was on?

CBH - It came out of Nashville, Tennessee actually, in the  fifties.  It was WFM I believe.  I was hearing Bobby Bland, BB King, and  John Lee Hooker.   I had never heard music quite like that before.  It was at nighttime  that I got it.  There were probably six clear channel stations in the South,  and as soon as the sun went down the clear channels would come on.  I don't  remember the name of the program, just that as soon as the sun came down this station came on.  I'm talkin '54-'58.

RST - Lately it has  hit me that The Dunhams' radio  program here in Atlanta may be serving a similar purpose for some of  the younger folks around Atlanta.  Do you remember where you met  them, and what your first impressions of them were?

CBH - I think we were playing at their  house, (some of the) Aquarium Rescue Unit about two years ago.  Oteil  wasn't there, but Jeff, Jimmy and I, I think.  As a matter of fact I guess  we went to their studio one time, and then the next time we went to their house.

RST - Have you ever in your career experienced  anything like that, folks having musicians in their living room and  broadcasting it on a commercial radio station?

CBH - Not actually, I've never seen anything  quite like it, no.  It's one of a kind, so far.  I mean to have people like  Little Feat in there is quite something to say the least; that's very  high quality music. I can't listen to much radio because most of it just  makes me sick.  They do play real pure music, and that's not really done on  a station that's that big at any time.  It's great that they do play pure  and good music, it's critical actually.

RST - Now they have bands perform live at a club  here in town, but I hear they may occasionally return to having bands in  their living room.  Would you say they've contributed to making Atlanta one  of the most vital cities for the groove rock or improvisational rock scene?

CBH - Yeah, they sure have.

Also look for a feature on The Dunhams' radio program that we discussed above.