'Jazz Lives': An Exhibit Of Two Iconic Photographers

Lee Friedlander, Young Tuxedo Brass Band, New Orleans, 1959. Gelatin silver print. © Lee Friedlander, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco - See more at: http://artgallery.yale.edu/exhibitions/exhibition/jazz-lives-photographs-lee-friedlander-and-milt-hinton#sthash.IlhZ1e99.dpuf

Work Of Lee Friedlander And Milt Hinton At Yale University Art Gallery

By ALAN BISBORT

Special To CTNow

April 17, 2014

We are one lucky nation to have a homegrown musical form, and cultural force, like jazz. Fortune continued to smile by giving us Milt Hinton (1910-2000) and Lee Friedlander (born 1934), two homegrown photographers with unique visual styles but a shared love of jazz. Finally, we are lucky in this state to have "Jazz Lives," an exhibition at Yale University Art Gallery that offers the best work of both men and an inside-out look at "our" musical legacy.

Hinton, a longtime jazz bassist who played with everyone from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Billie Holliday and Aretha Franklin, gives us the "inside" look. Having started his musical career in the 1930s in the clubs of Chicago before moving to New York, Hinton came of age alongside jazz. His first steady gig was with Cab Calloway, whose band he joined in 1936 and toured with for 20 years. He was also an in-demand studio musician, which provided steady work accessible to his home in Queens.

Regardless of whether he was on the road or in the studio, Hinton took a camera wherever he went, and even kept a camera on his music stand. His photographs, says David Berger, conservator of the Milt Hinton Archive, provide "an insider's perspective. It's backstage, it's on the road, it's part of a scene."

The photographs on view at Yale, taken between 1938 and 1981, show Hinton to be a collector of faces, characters and portraits. He went about his business methodically "collecting" his friends and bandmates, not unlike how Carl Van Vechten captured the principals of the Harlem Renaissance. Here they all are: Milt Jackson, Dinah Washington, Percy Heath, Horace Silver, Quincy Jones, Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderly and a Who's Who of others. The shot of Armstrong in 1954 is particularly nice, taken in a hotel room, his pants unbuttoned to give his girth relief, a cigarette dangling from one hand as he toyed happily with a stereo system. Many pictures taken in bars show the races mixing freely, particularly at New York's Beefsteak Charlie's, but these are counterbalanced by shots of musicians with signs in the background warning: "Colored Entrance," "For Colored Only," or "Motel for Colored." Others are just humane documents — Gillespie sleeping on a train or wowing some French kids, an aging Duke Ellington behind the keys at a Yale concert in 1972, a Young Aretha in (yes) high heels.

Read more: http://www.courant.com/entertainment/hc-ctn-friedlander-0417-20140417,0,4254022.story?track=rss