Playing the Changes: Milt Hinton's Life in Stories and Photographs - Hardcover

Hinton, Milt; Berger, David G.; Maxson, Holly

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826515746 ISBN 13: 9780826515742

Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008

Synopsis

Legendary African American jazz bassist and photographer Milt Hinton (1910-2000) tells his compelling life story and illustrates it with more than 260 of his photographs, exquisitely reproduced in this collectors' edition. Hinton's stories - witnessing a lynching as a child in Mississippi, working for Al Capone, breaking the color line in the recording studio - are equal to his celebrated photographs: capturing life on the road with Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday at her last recording date, and personal and professional views of icons such as Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, Dizzy Gillespie, and Barbra Streisand. ""Playing the Changes"" draws from Hinton and Berger's earlier ""Bass Line"", but differs significantly from that 1988 classic. Milt's narrative takes up where the earlier story left off, and more than 140 new photographs augment 115 of his best-known images. It also boasts a CD of Milt telling stories and performing music, as well as a discography and filmography.

About this title

Review:

To the jazz collector [t]his book is both an indispensible history and a delightful volume to dip into.
--Jazz Journal

...revealing and rewarding.
--American History

The book confirms why Milt was everybody's favorite and one of the finest gentlemen and musicians I have ever known.
--Dave Brubeck

[R]eveals the foundations of both music and American life. It's essential reading for anyone who really wants to be hip.
--Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Beautifully produced, this is essential for jazz fans and for any library with jazz-related collections. Highly recommended.
--Library Journal

Playing the Changes is a permanent vividly multi-dimensional contribution to jazz history by "The Judge" Milt Hinton--a singular creator of that history.
--Nat Hentoff

About the Author:

In 1955, when he was fourteen, David G. Berger asked Milt Hinton for bass lessons - thus beginning a friendship and professional partnership that would last more than forty 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 thirty years. In 1979, Holly Maxson began organizing Milt's photographs for the first book. 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0826515746
• ISBN 13: 9780826515742
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384