On the few occasions when I’ve said hello to Scott Hamilton, he’s been just as shy and diffident as he is here with Peter Appleyard in a 1977 appearance in Toronto. Perhaps that’s why there’s a paucity of cover stories and interviews with the Providence native in the jazz press. When you combine his reticence with the fact that Hamilton has stuck with the tried and true since his emergence in the mid-70’s, I suppose it’s easy for him to be taken for granted by editors looking for something trendier than masterful tenor saxophone playing on tunes of timeless beauty.
As noted in their exchange, Appleyard and Hamilton toured occasionally with Benny Goodman in the 70’s and ‘80’s. Here’s the tenorman in 1982 with a Goodman septet featuring Warren Vache, Chris Flory, John Bunch, Phil Flanigan, and Mel Lewis playing “That’s A Plenty.”
Hamilton has been a pacesetter for the modern mainstream, and his proteges include Harry Allen. They’ve recorded together for Concord Jazz, Venus, and Challenge, and here lock horns on a thrilling performance of “Cottontail,” which neatly integrates Ben Webster’s classic solo and his equally famous scoring of the unison chorus for the Ellington saxophone section that first recorded the tune in 1940.
Today is Hamilton’s 60th birthday. Here he is in 2006 back in his own backyard at the Hi-Hat in Providence playing “Jitterbug Waltz.” That’s Jon Wheatley on guitar, Marshall Wood on bass, and Chuck Riggs on drums.
Hamilton was known as a prolific recording artist before he turned 30, and the tide of Hamilton releases continues to swell 30 years later. I’d be hard pressed to narrow a list of favorites by him to ten, but one that would surely vie for inclusion is HI-YA, the session he made in 2009 with the English saxophonist Alan Barnes. It’s devoted mostly to Johnny Hodges tunes, and here’s one of them.