[Dixielandjazz] Milt Hinton documentary on PBS

[David Richoux]

Hi all,

A few days ago I sent a message about the documentary  ``Keeping Time: 
The Life, Music and Photographs of Milt Hinton''  - I hope you have had 
a chance to see it or will see it soon, because IMO it is a great film!

Somehow I think it fills a big gap in the "Ken Burns Jazz" series where 
the focus on Big Band  switches quickly  to Bop and Dizzy, dismissing 
Cab Calloway as a "mere entertainer" and Milt Hinton's contributions to 
that band (and bass players in general) as not worthy of much mention.  
(as I recall.)

I also think this film does a great job explaining the primary role of 
the bass player in jazz (not excluding tuba players ;-) in setting 
tempo, mood, and "drive."

The many thousands of pictures Milt took of fellow musicians are a big 
part of this documentary but there are also many interviews with him, 
his fellow musicians and his family.  Great stuff!

Dave Richoux

> PBS looks at jazz great who captured history on film
>
> By Charlie McCollum
> Mercury News
>
> Every now and then, television comes up with a small gem of a show: 
> Nothing big or earth-shattering, just a nice, sweet bit of TV.
>
> That's the case with Tuesday's ``Keeping Time: The Life, Music and 
> Photographs of Milt Hinton'' (11 p.m., Ch. 9). Airing as part of PBS's 
> ``Independent Lens'' series, ``Keeping Time'' is a glowing portrait of 
> a true jazz giant: a bassist whose work spanned the decades from Cab 
> Calloway in the 1930s to Branford Marsalis in the 1990s.
>
> Hinton, who died five years ago, is a fascinating figure. He grew up 
> in the Jim Crow South, started his career in the Chicago of Louis 
> Armstrong and Al Capone. He played behind artists ranging from Billie 
> Holiday to Barbra Streisand and easily weathered the evolutions in 
> jazz music, as comfortable with fusion as he was with big band.
>
> What makes ``Keeping Time'' special, though, is that over the years, 
> Hinton chronicled his world with more than 60,000 black-and-white 
> photos. He was as creative with his camera as he was with his 
> variation on slap bass, capturing other musicians from Calloway and a 
> young Dizzy Gillespie to Miles Davis and Tony Bennett in candid 
> moments. His casual shots of a legendary 1958 gathering of jazz greats 
> are as revealing as the famous group portrait that appeared in Esquire 
> magazine.
>
> Hinton's photographs also evoke the changes in America that took place 
> during his life. The interviews with Hinton used in the film make it 
> clear that he understood he was watching history being made and took 
> every opportunity to capture it.
>
> Produced by David G. Berger and Holly Maxson and narrated with flair 
> by actor Jeffrey Wright, ``Keeping Time'' owes more than a bit to 
> documentary filmmaker Ken Burns in terms of its style -- which is a 
> good thing. The film does a fine job of giving viewers a sense of 
> Hinton's music and his photography and benefits from an above-average 
> set of observations on the man from the likes of author Amiri Baraka, 
> journalist Nat Hentoff, jazz educator Dan Morgenstern and jazzmen Ron 
> Carter, Jon Faddis, Joe Williams and Joe Wilder.
>
> All in all, ``Keeping Time'' is a lovely riff on a man who holds a 
> special place in a distinctly American form of music.