Playing the Changes, Milt Hinton's Life in Stories and Photophraphs

Remarkable! I saw the award winning documentary of Keeping Time: The Life, Music and Photographs of Milt Hinton, on PBS. I absolutely must get this new book, Playing the Changes. I will sit it on my coffee table next to my Gordon Parks book "Half Past Autum". I think both books are great coffe books because they capture american culture in in it's actuality; which evokes moving conversation. Jazz is the only American art form originating in the United States. As a cultural tradition, I collect jazz prints, jazz music and am trying to learn more about the history and tradition of Jazz. Milt Hinton is the most accomplished and influential base player in the history Jazz, and has become the historian of traditional Jazz. Thankfully his documentation of the artform exists for the Museums, as it is a pivotal part of American history. Thankfully David Berger helped put Milt's massive collection of pictures together and published the work. As it might be the only historical document of the history of jazz, candidly, as it really was. Interestingly, after viewing the documentary, Keeping Time, I realized I have one of Milts pieces; Billy Holiday; the Last recording session. I bought the print in New Orleans 14 years ago. It's framed on my living room wall, but I didn't know the story behind the picture. If you can hear me heaven, thanks Mr. Hinton for describing the story behind that powerful picture; it now has even more meaning to me. I can not waite to get Playing the Changes.


The Words, Images, and Music of One of the Greats In American Jazz New book and cd chronicle the artistic and personal journey of extraordinary bassist Milt Hinton

The life story of Milt Hinton is rooted in hard times, rising from segregated backwater clubs to elegant concert halls, offering a perspective on the African American experience that is unique in its mix of humor and wisdom.

The publication of PLAYING THE CHANGES: Milt Hinton's Life in Stories and Photographs (Vanderbilt University Press, January 2008) not only tells Milt's compelling story, in his own inimitable style, but also exquisitely reproduces 260 of his incredible photographs. He began taking pictures in the 1920s and continued documenting the world that he knew, in and away from the spotlight, up to his death in 2000 at age 90.

These photographs, more than 140 of which are published here for the first time, burst with life--and some would swear sound--revealing candid and often intimate moments of both the famous (Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Duke Ellington) and the not so famous who played alongside them, such as 400-pound arranger/bandleader/organist “Tiny" Parham.

Included with the book is a CD of music and interviews with Milt Hinton, along with a discography and a filmography.

This remarkable book reveals as well that Hinton possessed a gift of narrative. Blessed with a storyteller's facility, he leads the reader back to his first memories as a child in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and even beyond, to his father's African birth and elements of that legacy that lingered in his grandmother's cooking. Through his recollections we feel these times and places, down to the lynching he witnessed at age seven and, nearly as horrible, the surreal stillness of the town the morning after.

Interweaving photos and prose, the book traces Milt's path from Mississippi to Chicago, where he polished his music through the famous Wendell Phillips High School program and earned money running errands for the Al Capone organization. Committing full time to music, Hinton crossed paths with people who seem cut from a mold that was broken long ago. Many have left vivid marks on history, from the legendary boxer Jack Johnson to the incomparable Cab Calloway, with whose band Hinton traveled for many years. Others have been forgotten or died too young, like the tough-talking and brilliantly gifted singer Ann Robinson, whose rise toward fame ended suddenly one night in a Harlem alley.

Combining an acute observational eye with an ear sensitive to music and conversation, Hinton casts these characters in revealing light. He was there to witness a legendary and nearly fatal encounter between Calloway and a knife-wielding Dizzy Gillespie, to help remove the great Charlie Parker, passed out on heroin, from under a table in a bar, and to see the King of Swing, Benny Goodman, playing pinball alone in a Broadway arcade. Whether huddling in the basement of a backwater club as a race riot raged overhead or shaking hands with President John F. Kennedy at a swank soiree, Hinton registers these moments and summons them back to life on every page of Playing the Changes - and in so doing, preserves an important part of America's culture and history for posterity.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS: In 1955, when he was 14, David G. Berger asked Milt Hinton for bass lessons -- thus beginning a friendship and professional partnership that would last more than 40 years. Berger, though, did not follow in his friend's footsteps to become a professional musician; instead he completed a doctorate in sociology and taught at Temple University for 30 years. In 1979, Holly Maxson began organizing Milt's photographs for Hinton and Berger's first book, Bass Line. Maxson and Berger co-direct the Milton J. Hinton Photographic Collection, and in 2002 they completed their award-winning documentary about Milt's life, Keeping Time: The Life, Music and Photographs of Milt Hinton. (Photograph courtesy of The Milton J. Hinton Photographic Collection)

BOOK INFORMATION
PLAYING THE CHANGES: Milt Hinton's Life in Stories and Photographs
By Milt Hinton, David G. Berger, and Holly Maxson
Foreword by Clint Eastwood; Preface by Dan Morgenstern
384 pages, 11 x 9.5 inches, 260 black & white photos, with a CD of interviews and music, discography, filmography


Trade cloth w/CD $75.00 (ISBN 978-0-8265-1574-2)
To be published January 2008 by VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY PRESS



Visit the Milt Hiton website

Milt Hinton at All About Jazz.