Chase Hampton

Chasen Cord "Chase" Hampton (born January 12, 1975) is an American actor, performer, singer, songwriter, musician, and mentor.

Early life and career

Born of Cherokee and Sac-Fox Native American descent in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Hampton is the only child of Bill and Kenyan Hampton and is a 5th generation American roots soul singer. He has been singing since age 2, and by age 15 signed his first recording contract with Disney's Hollywood Records. Hampton has performed his music on stages all over the world, as well as appeared on MTV, VH1, E! channel's The E! True Hollywood Story, A&E's Biography, and starred on serial television shows such as Fox's The X-Files and HBO's Big Love, among others. Now co-founder of the Buzzfly record label with producer Mike Vizcarra, Hampton has had the freedom to write and perform with some of the most celebrated musicians in the industry.

Hampton began his career as a student of the circus arts. He is a trained juggler and fire-spinner, and worked as a professional clown in childhood. In the mid-1980s, he made his acting debut in a guest appearance on the Oklahoma City-area version of Romper Room. Shortly after, Hampton won a small role as a mischievous little boy who called himself "Ben Dover" in the independent slasher film Offerings.

In 1988, Hampton and his parents answered the casting call for a Disney-produced TV movie, one that was to serve as a reunion of the original 1950s Mousketeers from the Mickey Mouse Club. The project, titled Why? Because We Like You, was looking to cast a crop of new child mousketeers to join the elder ones in the film's plot. Hampton was chosen as one of the child mousketeers, but the project would soon go through many changes. Rather than producing the project as a TV movie, Disney decided instead to turn it into an actual revival of the original Mickey Mouse Club series for The Disney Channel, featuring an all-new child cast of mousketeers. Hampton, along with several other children from the TV movie, was retained to star on The All New Mickey Mouse Club. He appeared on the show initially for four seasons between 1989 and 1992, before returning to the show as a co-host (with former castmate Tiffini Hale) for its final season in 1994-1995. However, Hampton remained contracted to The Walt Disney Company and to The All-New Mickey Mouse Club during the seasons he did not appear on the show.

Near the end of the second season in 1990, the producers of MMC sought out to assemble a teen pop group in light of the current popularity of New Kids on the Block. Wanting to extricate such a group from the MMC cast, the producers chose Hampton, along with cast members Damon Pampolina, Albert Fields, Deedee Magno and Tiffini Hale, to compose the new pop act. A viewer voting contest would soon name the group The Party. Hampton went on to release four albums with The Party on Disney's Hollywood Records, charting five hit singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.^[1] The remake of the Dokken track "In My Dreams" was the highest charting single, reaching #34, and is perhaps the best known hit from The Party.

Hampton has acted in several serial television shows and feature films and has been the vocalist of the rock band Buzzfly, as well as a solo artist. He has been employed as a performing artist, mentor, and performance coach, mentoring and grooming talent, at a leading Performing Arts school in the Los Angeles, California area; he held residency as the Music Director for two of the school's locations.

Hampton has shared the stage with some of the biggest talents and names in the entertainment industry. His music has been produced by Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Teddy Riley. Over the years, he's appeared with film stars including Ryan Gosling, Keri Russell, and Jessica Biel, and music artists including Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Taylor Dayne, Color Me Badd, and mostly recently (2010) Davey Johnstone and Nigel Olsson of the Elton John Band, and guitar icon Slash of Guns N Roses and Velvet Revolver.

In 2007, Hampton's first solo effort album, Something to Believe, was released on his Buzzfly label.

Beginning in February 2011, Hampton began to tour the southeastern US in support of his 2010 solo release, Drugstore Girls. The tour began with a performance in Orlando, Florida. The cover model for the EP is American model, actress, and former adult film star Kendra Jade Rossi.

Since 2011, Hampton has served as co-creator and producer of the live concert performances of children's recording artist Riff Rockit, the alias of singer/songwriter Evan Michael.^[2] Hampton additionally served as a writer and voiceover artist on the 2013 direct-to-DVD release Riff Rockit: The Power of Music, in which he voiced the character of Ben Jammin.^[3] He hired a few of his former All-New Mickey Mouse Club co-stars to provide voices for the project, including Damon Pampolina, Deedee Magno Hall, Marc Worden and Rhona Bennett.

In 2014, Hampton teamed with Boston-area rappers Reks and Dutch ReBelle for the recording of the hip-hop single "I Can't Breathe", which featured Hampton on vocals, Reks and ReBelle on rap verses, and producing by American Antagonist. "I Can't Breathe" addressed the recent cases of racial profiling by police, namely the incidents that occurred in Ferguson, MO and Staten Island, NY; it was the latter event that lent the single its name, as victim Eric Garner was recorded to have spoken the phrase "I can't breathe" as he was apprehended by police.

Personal life

On July 28, 2012, Hampton married Lisa Cinelli, a former girlfriend from his teenage years with whom he had recently reunited.^[4] The two had originally met in 1989 on the set of The All-New Mickey Mouse Club, when Cinelli was a visiting audience member. Their initial courtship lasted into Hampton's tenure as a member of The Party. The couple divide their time between Hampton's home in Los Angeles and Cinelli's residence just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Their daughter, Everly Love Hampton, was born on October 20, 2016. ^[5]

Filmography

Discography

With the Party

• The Party (1990)
• In the Meantime, In Between Time (1991)
• Free (1992)
• The Party's Over...Thanks for Coming (1993)
• Greatest Hits (1997)

With Buzzfly

• no official releases

Solo

• Something To Believe EP (May 16, 2007)
• Drugstore Girls EP (August 20, 2010)

References

External links

• Chase Hampton at the Internet Movie Database
• Chasen Hampton's Buzzfly band web site
• Buzzfly on MySpace
• Chasen Hampton on Facebook
• Chasen Hampton on ReverbNation
• "ActorsE Chat Show" Chase Hampton and Ben Babylon, with host Judith Jones on Actors Entertainment