Thread by @dean_frey

Remembering Milt Hinton - The Judge - on his birthday 🎂🎉
Besides being a great jazz bassist, Hinton was a fine photographer. I'm listening to Here Swings the Judge, from 1975, while I search out some of his best photos. The cover photo is by Les Line.

Milt Hinton took the great photo of Ben Webster on the back of this album. Of course he had access to the jazz greats, but Hinton had such a great eye!

Milt Hinton
Ben Webster, Red Allen & Pee Wee Russell
"Good photographs are there to be listened to as well as looked at; the better the photograph the more there is to hear. The best jazz photographs are those saturated in the sound of their subject."
- Geoff Dyer

Remembering Milton Hinton on his birthday 🎂
Ben Webster, Earl Warren, Lester Young, Gerry Mulligan
@librarycongress
Gerry Mulligan Collection

Gerry Mulligan in a television studio, 1957
Photo: Milt Hinton
@librarycongress Gerry Mulligan Collection
So much cool on both sides of the camera!

"I got my first camera in 1935. It was a 35 mm Argus C3, and it was a present for my twenty-fifth birthday. I
had the Argus with me when I started on the road with Cab in 1936."
- Milt Hinton
A great shot of Hinton by Chuck Stewart

Milt Hinton
Dizzy Gillespie & Charles Mingus in Newport, 1971
Notice that Dizzy has a camera as well, a Rolleiflex, if I'm not mistaken.
Every time you see a Rolleiflex, take a drink. It's a bit early in the morning here, but a drinking game's rules are sacred. 🍸📷

Milt Hinton
Danny Barker & Dizzy Gillespie asleep on the train, while on tour with the Cab Calloway orchestra, c. 1940
This is one of my favourite Milt Hinton photographs.

I mustn't forget the music in this Milt Hinton birthday thread! This is a special album from 1955: "Milt Hinton / Wendell Marshall / Bull Ruther – Basses Loaded!" Three 45 rpm EPs. Milt is up first.

Milt Hinton
Lammar Wright, Mario Bauza, Foots Thomas, Eddie Morton, Cab Calloway & Bennie Payne at the Atlanta Train Station, c. 1940
A wonderful photograph: defiance, style & pride.

Milt Hinton
Billie Holiday listens to playback, in her last studio recording session, 1959
This is so sad; she was very ill by this time. Billie died on July 15, 1959

Aretha Franklin by Milt Hinton, New York, c. 1961
Aretha was 19; she had just signed a recording contract with Columbia Records.

Milt Hinton sets up August 12, 1958: A Great Day in Harlem. Art Kane took the famous photo, & Jean Bach made a wonderful film, but Milt was an important part of the process. And of course he's in the shot as a musician!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Great_D…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Great_D…

Here's a shot Milt Hinton took during A Great Day in Harlem, August 12, 1958, with his Leica.
"Looking back, I can truly say that gathering marked the final days of what’s now called the Golden Age of Jazz. A few years later, many of the guys who were there were gone."

Marian McPartland, Mary Lou Williams & Thelonious Monk, A Great Day in Harlem, August 12, 1958
A shot, perhaps, by Milt Hinton, but remember what he said: "I gave Scoville Browne the Canon, which had color slide film in it." Hinton always preferred to shoot in black & white.