Flying Home

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Flying Home is a jazz standard written by Lionel Hampton and Benny Goodman and published in 1940. Sid Robin later wrote a text about it. The up-tempo piece became Lionel Hampton's signature tune.

Special features of the song

The fast swing number is written in the song form AABA. In the A section, it essentially consists of a 2-bar riff repeated several times . The text describes someone who once left his love and now flies back to stay and find happiness.

History of origin

The piece was composed in 1939 when Goodman flew with his band from Los Angeles to Atlantic City ; for Hampton, as for most of the other members of the band, this was their first flight. Against his fear of the flight, he hummed to himself. Goodman asked him the name of the piece, to which he replied, "Flying Home." That same evening, Goodman played the piece with his quartet in Atlantic City.

The first recording of the piece was made on November 6, 1939; it was recorded by the Benny Goodman Sextet and released with Rose Room ; Hampton and Charlie Christian had solos . In February 1940, Hampton chose the piece for one of the first recordings under his own name. He reached number 25 on the American charts.

Impact history

Malcolm X mentions Flying Home in his autobiography as the climax of a concert by Lionel Hampton, which he attended in his youth. The song became famous in an arrangement by Milt Buckner with Hamptons Bigband as a feature for tenor saxophonist Illinois Jacquet , who made the song "a hot, roaring rhythm 'n' blues battle" in June 1942 ; this version, which according to Gunther Schuller can be regarded as a "forerunner of rock 'n' roll ", placed at number 23 in the American charts. Jacquet recorded the song several times with his own band (1945, 1958). The piece has been recorded by most of the other swing orchestras, including Charlie Barnet (as early as 1940), Glenn Miller , Harry James , Woody Herman and Les Brown . Hampton recorded the piece himself again and again, for example with Oscar Peterson , Svend Asmussen , Quincy Jones ( Back on the Block , 1989), Buddy Tate (1991) and Joshua Redman (1994). In response to Illinois Jacquet, numerous saxophonists have interpreted the title, such as Arnett Cobb . The bebop pioneers also played it in their sessions at Minton's Playhouse and on the Jazz at the Philharmonic tours ( Charlie Parker , 1949). Of course, vibraphonists like Terry Gibbs , Red Norvo or Gary Burton (2001) have also played Flying Home . Guitarist Russ Spiegel builds on a live version of Charlie Christian (1941), which he underlined with hip-hop rhythms.

Ella Fitzgerald already took the title at the beginning of her career in 1947 in Carnegie Hall and developed it "to the top number of her scat singing "; In 1955 she played it again (with Vic Shoen's orchestra ) for the Decca album "Lullabies of Birdland". A live version of the Montreux Jazz Festival , in a duo with Count Basie , 1979 lasted more than seven minutes ( Digital III at Montreux ). Even Chris Connor sang Flying Home .

In 1996 the song received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award .

Uses in film

Especially in the last few decades, the piece has been used repeatedly in films:

literature

  • Lionel Hampton, James Haskins: Hamp - an Autobiography , Amistad 1999.
  • Hans-Jürgen Schaal (Ed.): Jazz standards. The encyclopedia. 3rd, revised edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1414-3 .
  • Gunther Schuller The Swing Era The Development of Jazz 1930-1945 Oxford University Press, Oxford 1989

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Schaal, Jazz-Standards, pp. 152f.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Song portrait (Jazzstandards.com)
  3. ↑ a b song portrait (All About Jazz)
  4. ↑ IMDB