31 Facts About Milt Hinton

Milton John Hinton was an American double bassist and photographer.

Milt Hinton was a photographer of note, praised for documenting American jazz during the 20th Century.

Milt Hinton was three-months-old when his father left the family.

Milt Hinton grew up in a home with his mother, his maternal grandmother, and two of his mother's sisters.

Milt Hinton said that one of the clearest memories of his childhood was when he accidentally came upon a lynching.

Milt Hinton moved with his extended family to Chicago, Illinois, in late 1919, which created opportunities for him.

Milt Hinton performed with Freddie Keppard, Zutty Singleton, Jabbo Smith, Erskine Tate, and Art Tatum.

Milt Hinton soon taught himself to play the double bass because opportunities for violinists were limited.

Milt Hinton received steady work from 1932 through 1935 in a quartet with violinist Eddie South, with extended residencies in California, Chicago, and Detroit.

In 1936, Milt Hinton joined the Cab Calloway Orchestra, initially as a temporary replacement for Al Morgan, while the band was on tour en route to a six-month residency at the newly opened midtown location of the Cotton Club in New York City.

Milt Hinton quickly found acceptance among the band members, and he ended up staying with Calloway for over fifteen years.

In 1939 when Milt Hinton returned to Chicago for his grandmother's funeral, he met Mona Clayton, who was then singing in his mother's church choir.

Milt Hinton helped musicians in the band manage their money, and she often insisted that they open savings accounts.

Milt Hinton kept track of Hinton's freelance work, scheduled interviews, coordinated public relations events, and often drove him back and forth to gigs.

Milt Hinton performed regularly at La Vie en Rose, the Embers, the Metropole, and Basin Street West, where he appeared with Jackie Gleason, Phil Moore, and Joe Bushkin.

Milt Hinton described the decision as "very difficult" as it would force him to be away from his family, and it would slow down the momentum he was gaining as a freelance musician in New York City.

Steady pay and the opportunity to perform with Armstrong were persuasive, and Milt Hinton performed dozens of concerts, including a tour of Japan, as a member of the band.

Milt Hinton went back on the road, first with Diahann Carroll for a tour in Paris in 1966, and later with Paul Anka, Barbra Streisand, Pearl Bailey, and Bing Crosby.

Milt Hinton taught for nearly twenty years, as a visiting professor of jazz studies at Hunter College and Baruch College, first offering a jazz workshop at Hunter in late 1973.

Milt Hinton played at the first Newport Jazz Festival in 1954 and was a regular at Newport and other jazz festivals produced by George Wein throughout the next four decades.

Milt Hinton was a favorite at the Bern Jazz Festival in Switzerland, sponsored by Hans Zurbruegg and Marianne Gauer.

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, Milt Hinton was featured on jazz cruises organized by Hank O'Neal, then owner of Chiaroscuro Records.

Milt Hinton received honorary doctorates from William Paterson College, Skidmore College, Hamilton College, DePaul University, Trinity College, the Berklee College of Music, Fairfield University, and Baruch College of the City University of New York.

Milt Hinton won the Eubie Award from the New York Chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Living Treasure Award from the Smithsonian Institution, and he was the first recipient of the Three Keys Award in Bern, Switzerland.

Milt Hinton contributed to the NEA's Jazz Oral History Program, continuing a longstanding practice of recording interviews with friends in his basement during extended visits.

Milt Hinton was broadly regarded as a consummate sideman, possessing a sensitivity for appropriately applying his formidable technique and his extensive harmonic knowledge to the performance at hand.

Milt Hinton was equally adept at bowing, pizzicato, and "slapping," a technique for which he first became famous while playing with the Cab Calloway Orchestra early in his career.

Milt Hinton was an accomplished sight-reader, a skill which he developed on the road with Calloway and honed during his several decades of studio work.

Milt Hinton received his first camera, a 35mm Argus C3, on his 25th birthday in 1935.

Milt Hinton later moved on to a Leica, then a Canon 35mm range-finder, and by the 1960s to a Nikon F Between 1935 and 1999 Hinton took thousands of photographs, approximately 60,000 of which now comprise the Milton J Hinton Photographic Collection, co-directed by David G Berger and Holly Maxson.

In June 1981, Milt Hinton had his first one-person photographic exhibition in Philadelphia, and since then items from the Collection have been featured in dozens of exhibits across the country and in Europe.