I was born in Mississippi…the year was 1910..we moved up to Chicago…and I never went back again. -Milt Hinton (1910-2000)

Just recently, I was struck with how small our world is. While attending a meeting for one of my jobs, I became acquainted with Cleveland Freeman. He is a attendance teacher/truancy investigator by day and a Jazz musician by night. As he rattled off all of the Jazz greats with whom he’s played with, I asked,”Have you every played with Milt Hinton?” His eyes widened as he leaned into me,”Milt is the Dean of the upright bass…a legend…” He went on to say, “I’ve never had the honor of playing with him, but I have a story about Milt, I was playing my solo…feeling great about the gig and the crowd was feeling me. I was having my moment when I opened my eyes and saw Milt and his wife as they walked into the venue…I got so nervous. I played out of tune for the rest of the night!” “Milt was a real legend. I really wish I had the opportunity to play with him.” Freeman recalled with visible veneration.

Playing the Changes: Milt Hinton’s Life in Stories and Photographs is an intimate, conversational, and humble telling of his extraordinary life depicted through his personal account, and the images captured from his camera’s eye. His music and stories voiced by him are also included on CD, which accompanies the coffee table book.

We learn within the first couple of pages of his strong relationship with and reverence for his maternal grandmother (mama) who was born a slave, and raised 13 children, including his mother, by herself. His resourceful uncles, Matt and Bob, who saves the money to send for Milt, his grandmother, mother and two aunts, to move to Chicago from Mississippi. The independent spirited Titter, his mother, who he describes as treating him more like a little brother than her son. His Aunts, Sissy and Pearl, who share in the support and nurturing of Milt. While it is clear that Hinton doesn’t have a much of a relationship with his father, we learn that he was born in Manrovia, Africa and came to America with a missionary group. As a young child Milt visits with his paternal grandmother and meets with his father as an adult over dinner and drinks during a week long gig in Memphis in 1940. It is clear that his strongest bonds are with the women on the maternal side of his family.

While Milt may not have been completely happy with his childhood or his relationships with his parents (really, who is?), this story does not read anguished and his tone is never “woe is me”. Even his tone when recounting one of his earliest, most vivid, childhood memories-his witnessing a lynching- is gripping, and unconvincingly resolved. He is 7 or 8 years old. His family is living in Vicksburg, Mississippi. While walking with is aunt he sees fifty or sixty white men dancing, cursing and drinking around a bonfire. He looks up and sees a figure shaped like a person hanging from a long wire cable attached to a branch. Some of the men from the crowd shoot their guns at the dangling body. He remembers the smell. Hinton recalls,”More than seventy years have passed, but I’ll never forget that blaze and watching that body shrivel up like a piece of bacon…” There is no expressed anger or resentment at the oppression and horrors in this Jim Crow era. How did this moment effect the rest of Milt’s childhood? Did Milt have nightmares as an adult…as a result of witnessing this heinous act of terrorism? Does Milt still remember this moment…when he sees bacon shrivel up in a frying pan? These unanswered questions leaves this reader wondering. Soon After this incident his family, like millions of African Americans, migrates north to Chicago.

-My basses are like my children. They’ll be with me forever.

Hinton, like most great musicians would try many instruments before finding the bass. He experiments with the violin, peck horn, bass saxophone and tuba. He played in both his high school symphony orchestra and ROTC marching band. During these early pre bass years, he  with Eddie Cole and was friends with Nat King Cole. While in young adulthood, he works for one of Al Capone’s underlings, stealing bottles of liquor. This brief stint would lead him to one of many fateful events in his life. While driving a panel truck during a delivery, he got into a tragic accident that takes the life of his passenger and almost his. He breaks both his leg and arm and one of his fingers is almost amputated.

This near death experience only makes him more determined to play. He speaks of music as his religion, his salvation-that which sustains him. Hinton would go on to become one of the greatest bassists in the history of Jazz music. Her travels the world and plays with the likes of Cab Calloway, Count Bassie, Duke Ellington and, Benny Goodman just to name a few. Milt Hinton would also serve as a mentor and teacher to younger Jazz musicians like Quincy Jones, Winton and Branford Marsalis and Terence Blanchard.

If playing the bass is his first love, making photographs is a close second. Unlike his knowledge of the bass, Hinton is not formally trained in photography. He gets his first camera as a present for his twenty-first birthday. It’s 1935 and he is on the road with Cab Calloway. Image making, like playing the bass remains a constant throughout most of his life. While on the road he sets up makeshift darkrooms in his hotels where he processes his film and makes prints. His routine would consist of shooting by day,  playing bass by night, shooting after the gig (in the bars and restaurants) and, developing film and printing photographs early mornings.

When Milt presses his shutter, he is not moved to capture sunsets, thunder filled clouds, or pretentious landscapes-nor is he interested in achieving perfect the perfect black and white print with zones 0 through 12 represented. When looking at Hinton’s images, one won’t see the “beautiful”, grainy, dark/high contrast, moody, smoke filled, stereotypical-Jazz club image. The closed eyed trumpet player blowing his lungs out while the sweat glistens off his brow. These “types” of images usually depict for example, the stage lights reflecting off the instrument making it the most prominent subject in the frame. The viewer might see a shadowy figured audience. These images portray the Jazz musician/celebrity- elevated to deity. These “types” of pictures are not included in this body of work.

There are no gods or deities in Hinton’s images. When most photographers of the 40’s through the 60’s were shooting the musicians formally posed on stage or in photographic studios, he makes a conscience decision to break from the norm and takes candid images of his fellow musicians, friends and family. He does this because he wants to show them the places he’s been, people he’s met and greats he’s preformed with. Hinton is aware that while most of the people he’s left behind while on the road will never have this oppertunity, they can experience this through his stories and pictures.

The majority of these images depict his friends in various hotel rooms, on the street, with their loved ones, in the bars after the “set” and in the recording studios. These images are not visual constructs of perceived personas. Many of these photographs are unflattering: a sleeping opened mouth, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong in a messy hotel room with a do-rag on (presumably to keep his conk fresh), the oppressive realities of Jim Crow…, a visibly distraught and prematurely aged Billy Holiday sitting behind a music stand during what would be her final recording session. Much like the war photographs of Robert Capa, or Gordon Parks’ images of the Fontenelle children in Harlem, Hinton’s images are not beautiful. These images force us to face the often times ugly realities of the world. They force the thinking person to question her/ his individual existence- his/her purpose- as it relates to those unspoken, unwritten implications these images raise. These images are our mirrors, ourselves reflected back at us.

This critique should not be considered at all negative or debasing, in fact Hinton’s photographs are honest, bold, and unlike the accompanying narrative, unequivocally political. When one looks at his work within the context of Jazz photography, Hinton humanizes these giants, lifting the persona, making them within reach. Frank Stewart, Roy Decarva, Chuck Stewart and the like, show us what we want them to be. Milt Hinton shows us who they are- parts of them only a close friend and true insider would see. This daring, fresh and potentially controversial point of view in Jazz photography, from a Jazz artist, is the mark of great art.

To Hinton’s own assertion, he didn’t anticipate that his photographs would be considered treasured historical documents, nor did he know that his body of work would result in the publication of three books of photographs. Milt Hinton, the photographer would go on to have exhibitions in some of the most prestigious gallery spaces in the world.

While enthralled in Milts’ story one becomes while reading Playing the Changes and listening to the accompanying CD, the lack of a pointed political viewpoint expressed in this narrative is disappointing. There are no social or political commentaries that place these experiences in real perspective and it read as through life just happened upon Hinton, in Forest Gump fashion. When explaining his Jim Crow photographs he states,”…I wasn’t trying to make a statement. We all lived in the North and the only ways we could deal with the stupidity of the segregation laws was to make fun of them.”  This reader would have liked to know, how were these laws-in Hinton’s opinion…stupid? How was he making fun of them? What conversations did he have with his fellow Black musicians surrounding these issues? If this were a primarily photographic book, these questions wouldn’t be raised; they would be left for the viewers’ interpretation. However, Playing the Changes is primary prose and unfortunately the narrative leaves this reader unfulfilled and left with unanswered questions.

Life “happens upon” us all, but most of us develop a pointed opinion about our experiences! When pivotal moments happen in our lives, we ask ourselves, what does this mean? This quest leads us to make mistakes, to stumble into mishaps and have highs and lows. We run the full gauntlet of emotions…we experience them over and over and start all over again. Our world-view is shaped by these experiences and a unique personal history emerges the gives light to those universal struggles we all face. This is the power of biography and memoir. This is the power of art. For this reviewer, the juxtaposition of Hinton’s bold images and passive narrative is both admirable and unsettling.

In West African society, the griot is a poet or praise singer. The griot is the wandering musician-considered a repository of oral tradition-the community historian. Milt was one of our griots;he leaves us a rich history in the form of music, photographs and narrative. His images are a Jazz historical treasure and the accompanying CD with Hinton’s voice is an added bonus. the work is beautifully packaged, well appointed and finely printed. Playing the Changes: Milt Hinton’s life in Stories and Photographs is a fascinating read. For Jazz aficionados and enthusiasts this work is essential and to most of us Jazz laymen- a welcomed addition to our growing collections of images and stories reflecting the unique rich tapestry of the African American experience. This reviewer is just left with a disconcerting question: Is everyone’s life wrapped up so neatly? – Dana Nzingha Tomlinson