jazz musician; photographer
Personal Information
Born Milton Hinton on June 23, 1910, in Vicksburg, MS; died in New York, on December 19, 2000; raised in Chicago from age nine; married, wife's name Mona; one daughter, Charlotte; one granddaughter.
Education: Studied classical violin and tuba at Wendell Phillips High School, Chicago; self-taught on string bass; attended Crane Junior College and Northwestern University.
Career
Jazz and pop bassist. Performed with numerous Chicago jazz bands, late 1920s and 1930s; made recording debut with Tiny Parham band, 1930; given camera as gift and began to document jazz scene, 1935; member, Cab Calloway Orchestra, 1936-51; continued to perform jazz; constant pop recording activity as sideman, including on Jackie Gleason Music for Lovers Only LP, 1950s and 1960s; released first solo LPs, Milt Hinton and Basses Loaded, 1955; established Milton J. Hinton Scholarship Fund, 1980; taught at Hunter College and Baruch College, New York, 1970s and 1980s; two books of photographs published, Bass Line, 1988, and OverTime, 1991; photos exhibited at major museums, early 1990s.
Life's Work
Milt Hinton was a string bass player whose career spanned much of the history of jazz and pop. He once said, according to the New York Times, that he had made "more records than anybody," and at the peak of his recording career he kept instruments at each of several major recording studios so that he would be ready to play at a moment's notice. In the history of jazz he was noted as one of the first players to perform bass solos, now considered an integral part of the music. Hinton was also a skillful photographer who documented the lives of jazz musicians in pictures that were widely exhibited later in his life.
Hinton was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on June 23, 1910; his mother's mother had been a slave owned by a relative of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. His father was an African brought to the U.S. by missionaries. Hinton's parents separated when he was young, and at age eight, he was quoted as saying in the Washington Post, he saw "a crowd, people all around, men shooting, a big barrel of gasoline on the ground and a man is on fire, like a piece of bacon with a wire rope around his neck." Fleeing lynchings and the other horrors of life in the South, Hinton's mother brought her son to Chicago.
Switched to Bass from Tuba
Studying classical music in school, Hinton endured teasing from his classmates, but he also became interested in the then-young art of jazz. He played the tuba, which served the role of harmonic support in early jazz, but then he switched to the bass; he later credited his classical violin training with allowing him to develop dexterity and innovative technique on the bass. Soon he found nightclub work in Chicago's vigorous jazz scene, playing with bands led by Erskine Tate, Zutty Singleton, and others. His break in jazz came in 1936 when he filled in for an absent bassist who was set to accompany the visiting singer and bandleader Cab Calloway.
Though Calloway had planned to find another bassist when he returned to his home base of New York, Hinton remained with Calloway's band for 15 years. "Calloway was my musical father," Hinton was quoted as saying in the New York Times. "He was so kind to me, and he gave me the opportunity to grow." Among other things, Calloway recorded pieces that brought Hinton and his bass to the fore; the 1939 recording "Pluckin' the Bass" was an example. Hinton also recorded with a whole roster of leading jazz musicians of the time, including Benny Goodman, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and the pain-seared vocalist Billie Holiday. In the early 1940s, he participated in some of the experimental sessions in which the pathbreaking bebop style was forged.
Hired by Jackie Gleason
The big bands declined in popularity after World War II, and, when Calloway finally disbanded his group in 1951, Hinton found himself out of a job. Vocal-based pop recordings were in the musical ascendancy, but Hinton faced pervasive segregation in the recording world, with top major-label studio jobs going exclusively to white musicians. That changed when comedian Jackie Gleason, who had known Hinton for years, demanded that Hinton be hired to play bass on his hugely successful Music for Lovers Only LP. "When I got there all the white musicians recognized me, and it was never a problem with them." Hinton reminisced in the New York Times. "It was the powers that be who were scared to send a black person on TV into a living room down South."
After that, Hinton acquired a reputation for professionalism and versatility; he worked at a feverish pace through the 1960s and 1970s, appearing on recordings ranging from television commercial jingles to those by such artists as Mahalia Jackson, Barbra Streisand, Dinah Shore, Debbie Reynolds, Johnny Mathis, and a young Aretha Franklin in the pre-soul stage of her career. Accounts differ as to how Hinton acquired his lasting nickname of "The Judge," but one theory holds that it came about because he insisted on absolute punctuality from the musicians with whom he worked.
Hinton also enjoyed a successful television career as part of the resident bands on several talk shows, including that of Dick Cavett in the 1970s. He remained indefatigably active even as the pop and jazz styles with which he was identified gave way to rock and soul; he toured Europe several times, including one stint with the band that backed pop crooner Bing Crosby on his final overseas tour, and, in the 1980s, he became involved with jazz education. Hinton taught at New York's Hunter College and, in 1980, established his own scholarship fund for young bassists. "I've always believed you don't truly know something yourself until you can take it from your mind and put it in someone else's," he was quoted as saying in the New York Times.
Photographed Jazz Musicians
After all these varied accomplishments came one more burst of fame that may have put Hinton's name before a wider public than any that had ever become familiar with him before. In 1935, Hinton received a $25 camera as a gift, and from then on he began, alongside his busy musical career, to document the lives of jazz musicians on film. Bass Line and OverTime, collections of Hinton's photographs published in 1988 and 1991, respectively, were culled from over 35,000 pictures he had taken.
Hinton's photographs constituted a vivid history of jazz in American culture. A 1940 shot of Calloway's impeccably dressed band standing under a "colored entrance" sign in the segregated South caught both the indignities suffered by touring jazz musicians and the spirit of triumph over racial divisions that jazz offered. Hinton made portraits of Calloway, trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, and a host of other musicians. Hinton photographed Billie Holiday on several occasions, the most famous being her final recording session in 1958. Hinton's photographs show Holiday's dismay at the deterioration of her voice due to years of substance abuse. "She is listening to a playback," Hinton recounted in Life. "She hears a bad note, and that put tears in her eyes because she was such a professional."
Hinton's photographs were also seen in the 1994 documentary film A Great Day in Harlem. In 1995, he released Laughing at Life, the last of several solo albums he recorded over the years. In the last decades of his life, Hinton was widely venerated with honorary degrees and national cultural awards. He died in the New York borough of Queens, where he had lived for many years, on December 19, 2000.
Hinton died on December 19, 2000, in Queens, New York, after an extended illness. He was 90.
Awards
Received eight honorary doctorates; received Living Treasure award from Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Works
Selected discography
- Milt Hinton, Bethlehem, 1955.
- Basses Loaded, Victor, 1955.
- Milt Hinton Quartet, Bethlehem, 1955.
- The Rhythm Section, Epic, 1956.
- The Trio, Chiaroscuro, 1977.
- Back to Bass-ics, Progressive, 1984.
- The Judge's Decision, Exposure, 1984.
- Old Man Time, Chiaroscuro, 1989.
- The Trio: 1994, Chiaroscuro, 1994.
- Laughing at Life, Columbia, 1995.
- Sideman on numerous 78 rpm and LP jazz and pop recordings, including Jackie Gleason, Music for Lovers Only.
Further Reading
Books
- Kernfeld, Barry, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Macmillan, 1988.
- Life, November 1988, p. 14.
- New York Times, December 21, 2000, p. B12.
- Washington Post, December 21, 2000, p. B7.
- All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com.
— James M. Manheim
