Bruce Hampton (born Gustav Valentine Berglund III, April 30, 1947) is a surrealist American musician. In the late 1960s he was a founding member of Atlanta, Georgia's avant-garde Hampton Grease Band. Adopting the moniker Colonel Bruce Hampton, Retired, and sometimes playing a sort of dwarf guitar called a "chazoid", he later formed several other bands. Some of those band names include The Late Bronze Age, The Aquarium Rescue Unit, The Fiji Mariners, The Codetalkers, The Quark Alliance, Pharaoh Gummitt, and Madrid Express.

Career

As a member of the Hampton Grease Band, Bruce Hampton helped record the 1971 album Music to Eat. The legend states this was the second-worst-selling album in Columbia Records history with the worst being a yoga record.

Hampton's band The Late Bronze Age consisted of Col. Hampton B. Coles, Ret. (Bruce Hampton) on vocals, slide guitar, mandolin, and chazoid; Ben "Pops" Thornton (Billy McPherson) on vocals, guitar, saxophones, and keyboards; Lincoln Metcalfe (Ricky Keller) on bass, guitar, brass, and vocals; and Bubba Phreon (Jerry Fields) on drums, percussion, trombone, and vocals. They performed several songs in the 1983 movie Getting It On.