When Chico Hamilton was a boy growing up in Los Angeles, the film studios used to send trucks out to pick up the little African-American children to play natives in their Tarzan movies. "It was work, after all, and we got paid for it," says the drummer, now 87 years of age. "And what you learned very quickly is not to look into the camera. Once you did that they could never hire you again." That's a lesson that relates to Hamilton's entire career as a musician; it's the craft and the work that have always mattered to him and though he's done countless things to appeal to many audiences, it's always been about the music.

Let's review that career a bit, because it's truly quite extraordinary. Born Foreststorn Hamilton in East Los Angeles in 1921, he was in a big family. His mother's heritage was Mexican, Indian and German Jewish and his father worked as a railroad porter and later, in LA, at the University Club of Southern California. It was the first Great Depression and things were tight for the Hamiltons. Says Hamilton, "Everyone was poor so we didn't think of ourselves that way. Many ethnic groups lived together there so it wasn't really a ghetto."

Hamilton started playing clarinet at age eight but switched a year or so later to a set of drums that belonged to an older brother who had graduated. "I made my own drumsticks and played them on everything in the house. My parents weren't necessarily musical but they encouraged me to play despite the fact that the church frowned on it. My mother took me to hear Duke Ellington when I was about nine and I had never seen anything like that. The band was in a pyramid and Sonny Greer was at the top. I consider him the first true percussionist—he played everything."

Hamilton bought his first set of drums at age 12 with money he earned from shining shoes. While in junior high school, Chico competed in an "amateur hour" at a local theater and won a first prize of $50, playing with a local pianist. Hamilton went to the noted Jefferson High School where some of his celebrated schoolmates were Ernie Royal, Dexter Gordon, Buddy Collette and Charles Mingus.

Soon, Hamilton had engagements with a wide variety of extraordinary musicians including