One of the best-known orchestra leaders of the Big Band Era, Lionel Hampton (born 1908) formed his own jazz group after first playing vibraphone with bands led by Benny Goodman and Les Hite. Hampton's band played a major role in the shaping of American jazz and was the launching pad for such stellar performers as Dinah Washington, Quincy Jones, and Charlie Parker.

Although there seems to be some question about his actual birthdate, Hampton wrote in his autobiography, Hamp, that he was born on April 20, 1908. The son of Charles Edward and Gertrude Morgan Hampton, he was born in Louisville, Kentucky. Not long after his birth, his mother moved the family to Birmingham, Alabama, and later to Chicago. His father joined the U.S. Army shortly after the United States entered World War I and was declared missing only weeks after he was sent to France. He survived the war...