Doc Skinner sits at the head of a half-filled classroom of middle schoolers repeating to them the stories he has of Lionel Hampton.
The students are silent except for the rustling of pages, the scratch of pencil on paper and the background music of the DVDs Skinner has brought to show them Hampton’s music.
The stories Skinner tells jump around in Hampton’s life and include some of Skinner’s as if the two men are one.
“He really did study the music, I don’t think I ever known anyone who’s loved chords like Hamp did,” Skinner said.
Skinner said he wrote a song for Hampton one year before the festival and when he showed it to Hampton, Hampton said he wanted to play it together.
So, Skinner said, they practiced for hours together every day before the festival so they could preform it together.
Skinner said he had called Hampton the night before he died, and they spoke one last time.
“When he passed away that was a tough year for me,” Skinner said.
The room stayed silent.
Another story Skinner told the audience was about how Hampton always knew the Pope and had two cards in his pocket. One got him into the Vatican and one into the White House.
Skinner said he comes back to keep telling the story of Hampton because it was Skinner’s pushing for the weekend long festival to be named after Hampton and so students do not forget the man it was named after.
Courtney Craft, a freshman at Washington State University said she is volunteering as part of her sorority.
She is part of Tau Beta Sigma, and they volunteer at many things like the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival which raise awareness of music in the community.
“We feel its really important to get the community itself, that’s not into music to understand the importance of music,” Craft said.
Craft said this is her first event she’s volunteered at and she thought it was important for younger generations to understand the people behind the names they read about.
Craft said it can influential to young music students to know the history of music and where it has come from so they can better understand where they are in it.
“This is the first workshop I’ve volunteered at today, but I think its very interesting and really influential to the kids to get to meet someone like Doc,” Craft said.
Kali Nelson can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @kalinelson6