Pete George Hampton (August 7, 1871 – March 16, 1916) was an American vocalist, harmonicist, banjo player, and vaudevillian from Bowling Green, Kentucky. He was part of various Vaudeville groups of which the most important were In Dahomey and his own Darktown Entertainers. He made more than 150 recordings during his career in the United Kingdom and Germany between 1903 and 1911. In 1904, he made the first harmonica recording by an African American, regarded as a pioneering example in the development of the blues harmonica style. Biography Pete G. Hampton was born in 1871 in Bowling Green, Kentucky. During his teenage years he was part of a banjo quartet that appeared in medicine shows in Ohio. In the 1890s, Hampton toured with minstrel troupes and became associated with Bert Williams and George Walker, and by 1902 became part of the musical comedy group In Dahomey. In 1903, the group went on touring the United Kingdom, where Hampton fell in love with Laura Bowman, a fellow troupe member, with whom he engaged in a common-law marriage. In the same year Hampton was accepted in the Grand Lodge of Scotland. After the original company broke up, Hampton and Bowman, instead of joining the new one, decided to form the Darktown Entertainers quartet with singers Will Garland and Fred Douglas. He toured with the company in many European countries including Germany, Hungary, Austria, France, Switzerland, and Russia, playing a variety of musical styles. The increasing political unrest in Russia forced the group to leave the state and return to England, where they finally were disbanded. After returning for a short period in the United States, Hampton with Bowman got back in London where they joined the second company of In Dahomey, this time with Hampton as one of the principal actors. Hampton purchased a house in England in 1910 and settled in, but with the outbreak of the First World War the British government forced all immigrants to leave the country and Hampton returned to America. Never fully recovering from the illness he gained while on the boat returning to the United States, he died three years after arriving in America, in 1916. Musical style and career Hampton's musical performances are of various musical genres. Although he was not a blues musician in the general sense, he is regarded as an important blues harmonica pioneer. In his performances he played the five-string