Pete Hampton

Pete George Hampton (August 7, 1871 – March 16, 1916) was an American vocalist, banjo player, harmonicist, and vaudevillian born in Bowling Green, Kentucky. His Broadway credits include the musicals Sons of Ham and In Dahomey, with his stage career active between 1900 and 1903.

Hampton's early performing life began during his teenage years, when he played banjo in a quartet that appeared in medicine shows across Ohio. By the 1890s he had moved into minstrel troupes, a circuit through which he became associated with performers Bert Williams and George Walker. This connection brought him into the production of In Dahomey, which he toured in 1902 before the show reached Broadway. He appeared in the production as one of its principal actors.

In 1903, the In Dahomey company traveled to the United Kingdom for a touring run. During this period Hampton met Laura Bowman, a fellow troupe member, with whom he entered into a common-law marriage. He was also accepted into the Grand Lodge of Scotland that same year. When the original company dissolved, Hampton and Bowman chose not to join its successor. Instead, Hampton formed the Darktown Entertainers, a quartet completed by singers Will Garland and Fred Douglas. The group toured extensively across Europe, performing in Germany, Hungary, Austria, France, Switzerland, and Russia. Political instability in Russia eventually compelled the group to leave and return to England, where they disbanded. Hampton and Bowman subsequently rejoined a second company of In Dahomey in London, with Hampton taking on a principal role.

Hampton's recording career was substantial, comprising more than 150 phonograph cylinders and 78rpm records made primarily in the United Kingdom and Germany between 1903 and 1911. In 1904 he recorded two versions of his own composition "Dat Mouth Organ Coon" for separate companies, a work recognized as the first harmonica recording made by an African American artist. His harmonica playing contained early examples of the technique known as bending, a method that would later become central to blues harmonica style, and he is regarded as a significant pioneer in that tradition. As a banjo player he performed on the five-string instrument. His repertoire drew heavily on so-called coon songs composed by others, performed in the minstrel tradition in which he had been raised, though he also wrote and recorded his own material. Among his compositions were pieces inspired by gospel and camp songs, including "When You Die You Are a Long Time Dead." He also composed "Lindy, Lindy, Sweet As Sugar Cane," which he sold to the husband-and-wife performing duo Charles Johnson and Dora Dean.

Hampton purchased a house in England in 1910 and settled there, but the outbreak of the First World War led the British government to require immigrants to leave the country. He returned to the United States, having contracted an illness during the voyage. He never fully recovered and died on March 16, 1916, three years after his return to America.