I started out as a trumpet player, and, when the right lips are behind the mouthpiece, I am still a passionate fan of that instrument. Today we celebrate the birthday of a wiry genius who produced some of the most sublime music that ever sprang from a trumpet or a cornet: Bobby Hackett.
Hackett was born into a large family in 1915 in Providence, Rhode Island. By the age of twelve he was making real music on the ukulele, banjo, guitar, violin, and trumpet. He quit high school to become a working musician and played in every club and roadhouse in New England before he came of age.
Hackett’s trumpet heroes were Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke. From Pops, Hackett got an education in hip phrasing and a lifelong love for Dixieland, and he learned volumes about playing the changes and finding the pretty notes from Bix. But as far as the remarkable tone he achieved on the horn is concerned, well, that was all Hackett, and he had it from the start.
Hackett went to New York City in 1937 and began a decades-long musical partnership with guitarist and bandleader Eddie Condon. By 1938 Hackett’s reputation was such that he was recruited by Benny Goodman to recreate Beiderbecke’s famous solo on “I’m Coming, Virginia” at Goodman’s historic 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert. The next year the MCA agency asked Hackett to form a big band, but the group never took off and Hackett ended up deep in debt. Dental surgery left him temporarily unable to play his horn, and Hackett joined the Glen Miller band—as a guitarist. The stint with Miller enabled Hackett to get back on his feet financially and to ease back into playing the trumpet again. (That’s Hackett doing the famous trumpet solo on the bridge of Miller’s monster hit, “String of Pearls.”)
Bobby Hackett, Eddie Condon, Charles Peterson, and Fats Waller at the Apollo Theater in 1937
Louis Armstrong included Hackett in his 1947 Town Hall jazz concert, and the following year Hackett made a splash with his brilliant playing on Frank Sinatra’s recordings of “I’ve Got A Crush On You” and “Body and Soul.” If you go looking for the ultimate example of an instrumentalist setting up and complementing a singer, you will definitely run into Hackett—who by now had become the undisputed king of the cadenza—brilliantly chaperoning Sinatra’s baritone on “Body and Soul.”
In 1952 comedy star and frustrated musician Jackie Gleason, inspired by seeing how lush music intensified a Clark Gable movie love scene, sold Capitol Records on the idea of an album of romantic instrumentals with a tinge of jazz. (“If Gable needs music, a guy in Brooklyn must be desperate!”) The resulting record, “Music For Lovers Only,” which was built around Hackett’s gorgeous playing, still holds the record for the longest stay (153 weeks!) on the Billboard Top Ten charts. Ten more make-out albums under Gleason’s name followed, seven featuring Hackett. Every one of them sold at least a million copies. (“He brought the checks” was Hackett’s comment when asked what role Gleason had played in recording the records.) Hackett’s solos became the soundtrack to the making of the boomer generation.
Capitol eventually got wise and signed Bobby Hackett to his own contract. Hackett released several great albums for the label over the next few years—some romantic albums of his own, some fronting Dixieland groups, and others featuring his own quartet and pianist Dave McKenna. Hackett also recorded and toured with Tony Bennett between 1965 and 1967.
In 1971 Hackett bought a house on Cape Cod, formed his own record company, and became a fixture at Dunfey’s in Hyannis, where he led a band featuring his son Ernie on drums. Bobby Hackett died of a heart attack in 1976 at the ridiculously young age of 61.
Louis Armstrong was quick to tell anyone who would listen that he was Bobby Hackett’s biggest fan. Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis revered him, too. Hackett’s playing was relentlessly tasteful and always perfectly suited to the material. He snaked through chord changes like no other, and a beautiful melody never had a better friend. Hackett was a supremely smart player who stuck to the trumpet’s sweet spot—its middle register. (When he once tried to sell one of his horns, he claimed—only half in jest—that the upper register was brand new because it had never been used.) Bobby Hackett is “Mister Music” to me.
Feast your ears on this 1973 clip of Bobby Hackett working his magic on “Serenade in Blue” with Ted Easton’s band in the Netherlands.