Midnight Sun - Lionel Hampton (Score reconstruction)
Posted: Sun May 03, 2026 5:53 pm
I just finished up some "finishing touches" on this reconstruction from Lionel Hampton's recording, to bring into rehearsal later this week.
This was an interesting project. Gary Herzensteil did end up having access to the original score from Hampton's library but the score had a whole lot of discrepancies (dare I say errors?
) compared to the recording, and the score did not include the "shout" at all. I had to fully transcribe that part.
For example, in that picture above, the trombone note in m. 3 was not in the score, nor were any of the sax notes in m.4-5 except for those tenor/bari pickups into A.
A link to the reference recording:
. . . Really pretty tune.
Anyway, the discrepancies, at least here on the first page, in my humble opinion show something interesting about performance practice in this period. Many bands pretty quickly memorized charts like this, and although I don't know for sure in Hampton's bands' case, I think this likely. In my imagination I think through a few rehearsals they did something like "hey, we need another note here, [trombone guy] play this." And they gradually built the chart up.
I also think that the original score of the shout, being not in this score, probably might be lost and likely was written out in some other day after what Gary scanned was penned, after they decided it needed something shouty.
So, that's me in my own head but it can be fun to go through this process and empathize with these musicians.
This was an interesting project. Gary Herzensteil did end up having access to the original score from Hampton's library but the score had a whole lot of discrepancies (dare I say errors?
) compared to the recording, and the score did not include the "shout" at all. I had to fully transcribe that part.For example, in that picture above, the trombone note in m. 3 was not in the score, nor were any of the sax notes in m.4-5 except for those tenor/bari pickups into A.
A link to the reference recording:
. . . Really pretty tune.
Anyway, the discrepancies, at least here on the first page, in my humble opinion show something interesting about performance practice in this period. Many bands pretty quickly memorized charts like this, and although I don't know for sure in Hampton's bands' case, I think this likely. In my imagination I think through a few rehearsals they did something like "hey, we need another note here, [trombone guy] play this." And they gradually built the chart up.
I also think that the original score of the shout, being not in this score, probably might be lost and likely was written out in some other day after what Gary scanned was penned, after they decided it needed something shouty.
So, that's me in my own head but it can be fun to go through this process and empathize with these musicians.