Milt Hinton

Milt Hinton grew up in Chicago, where his first professional work was with Boyd Atkins, Tiny Parham, and Jabbo Smith in the early 1930s. He also played with Eddie South, Erskine Tate, Zutty Singleton, and Fate Marable. From 1936 to 1951 he was a member of Cab Calloway's band, where with his full tone and tremendous drive he became a mainstay of the band's rhythm section. After leaving Calloway he worked as a freelance musician in New York, and was soon one of the most sought-after jazz musicians; he played with, among others, Count Basie and Louis Armstrong's All Stars, and took part in innumerable recording sessions. In the 1970s, Hinton undertook a few overseas tours (he was a member of the band that accompanied Bing Crosby on his final trip to Europe), and he has continued to perform regularly in the 1980s. He taught at Hunter College, CUNY, in the mid-1970s, and has also held occasional exhibitions of his work as a jazz photographer. Hinton's impressive sound and his sense of time were linked with a consummate feeling for harmony. These attributes gained him a strong reputation for playing many styles of music, including work with popular singers. His harmonic experiments in the 1940s with Dizzy Gillespie made him a forerunner of modern jazz bass players.