Inside the Club: Exhibit shows intimate moments in lives of jazz greats

The Daily News, Thursday, November 16, 2006

David Berger fell in love with jazz as a teenager growing up in Queens in the 1950s. At age 14, he started playing the bass violin, the stringed instrument that's held upright, played with a distinctive slap and central to scores of jazz recordings. Then he saw the 1956 film "High Society" starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and others, and it gave him an idea. Why not call one of the jazz greats living in New York at the time to give him lessons? "What really made the biggest impression on me was that Louis Armstrong and his band were in that film," Berger said of "High Society." So it was to the phone book that young Berger went. It was a decision partly responsible, several decades later, for his current career choice as co-curator of the Milton J. Hinton Photographic Collection in New York City. Hinton is widely regarded as one of the greatest jazz bass players of all time. Part of the Hinton collection is on loan to the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, an exhibit that began its run in Memphis this week. 'All that jazz' The Stax museum is hosting a 50-photo exhibit of Hinton's work that will run through Jan. 29. The Exhibit is titled "Milt Hinton: All That Jazz - Behind the Scenes Photographs of 20th Century Jazz." Here's how the connection between Berger and Hinton was made. As a teenager all those years ago, Berger first looked up the phone number for Arvell Shaw, Armstrong's bass player, and called to ask about possibly studying under him. Not likely, he was told; Shaw was on the road too much. He referred Berger instead to a jazz bassist who was kicking around the New York studio scene at the time, a man nicknamed "The Judge" for his unflappable ability to keep a steady rhythm. The man was Milt Hinton, and every Saturday for several months, Berger took the subway, then the bus, to where Hinton was living. He would hang out, sometimes until 10 or 11 at night. In those days, it was commonplace for legends like jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie or pianist "Count" Basie to drop by Hinton's place when the young Berger was around. He still vividly recalls a particular day when Count Basie - who lived around the corner from Hinton - stopped over, and Hinton began playing a silent movie on a 16 mm film projector he owned. "Basie sat down at the piano and just started playing an accompaniment," Berger said. "That's just the kind of thing you never forget." For the record Those visits formed the genesis of a lifelong friendship between Berger and Hinton, an old-school music man who could tell stories on just about everyone who was anyone in popular music. He once praised a top-of-the-line new bass guitar given to him by Paul McCartney, saying, "... it had all kinds of knobs on it, it could boil coffee and everything." Hinton, born in Mississippi in 1910, also had deep personal ties to Memphis and was equally as adept with a camera as he was with a bass guitar. It's those last two facts that have put the garrulous performer back in the local spotlight. When he wasn't playing with the likes of Cab Calloway, Barbara Streisand, Paul McCartney and others, Hinton was capturing snapshots in time of scores of influential jazz figures. His collection of personal photos includes more than 60,000 negatives, a treasure trove that Berger and his wife, Holly Maxson, have lovingly maintained since Hinton's death in 2000. "He was always concerned about keeping a record of all of this," Berger said. "Not to sell it to anybody, not to exploit anybody. I just think he was amazed by what he saw in his life, and he wanted to share it with other people." Said Carol Drake, who is the exhibits, archives and education manager at Stax: "The genius of Milt Hinton was not only in his music, but in his wisdom and foresight to document this era and these icons through photography." Capturing time For the next several weeks, Memphians may view Hinton's up-close-and-personal photos of people like Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin and more. Hinton reportedly always carried a camera with him, which enabled him to capture intimate moments, such as an image of Billie Holiday, one of the exhibit's most poignant. It's a shot of Holiday in a studio in 1959 during the last recording session of her life. She's holding a glass of vodka to help her voice, presumably to no avail. Her frustration with the sound of her singing - still powerful, but far removed from the qualities it possessed in her youth - is written plainly on her face. "Milt had access to legends like no other, and obviously their trust," Drake said. Maxson, who's also a photographer, met her future husband through their mutual interest in Hinton's work. "I credit Milt's photos for bringing David and me together," she said. Soon, those photos will bring the two of them to Memphis, where they'll host a gallery talk in conjunction with the Stax exhibit. Even then, much of Hinton's personal connection to Memphis likely won't be illuminated, such as the fact that his father is buried here, and that - because his parents separated before he was 1 year old - Hinton first ran into his father as a grown man while playing a Beale Street gig with Cab Calloway. Hinton had been raised in Chicago by his mother. He didn't know what to say to his father upon seeing him in Memphis, Hinton told a reporter several years ago, but the two men hugged anyway and - perhaps not surprising for a hard-working jazz musician - they went to a bar around the corner, where father and son shared a drink.