The great bassist Milt Hinton (1910-2000) had a long career and for a jazz musician, an unusually long life. He was born to a musical family in Vicksburg, Mississippi that relocated to Chicago in 1919. With a background in classical music, he played violin and tuba before switching to bass. He started his career in the late 1920s playing with Freddie Keppard, Jabbo Smith, Erskine Tate, and Art Tatum, He moved to New York in the mid-1930s where he joined Cab Calloway's band, playing with them from 1936 through 1951. Along the way and through the rest of his life, he freelanced playing with everyone Billie Holiday, Chu Berry, and Lionel Hampton to Branford Marsalis, playing at festivals all over the world. He became a busy studio musician in New York in the 1950s and 1960s and later taught at the university level. He's also a photographer and has released a series of books featuring his friends, jazz musicians in various settings. His career is vast.
He occasionally led his own date and Here Swings the Judge is a 1975 release from Famous Door that combines two sessions: the first was a 1975 sextet recording featuring Frank Wess on tenor, Budd Johnson on tenor and Bari, Jon Faddis on trumpet, John Bunch on piano, and Jo Jones on drums. The second session from 1964 features Hinton alone with the great Ben Webster on tenor saxophone in two duet settings and another featuring Webster playing stride piano.
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Jo Jones in the 1970s
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The septet recordings on side one feature primarily a swing to bop band. There isn't a lot of dissonance or advanced harmonies, though Wess, Faddis and Bunch do nod in this direction occasionally. I guess it's music you would expect of men in their fifties and sixties in 1975. Faddis (b. 1953) was the baby, but he fits right in with his Roy Eldridge - Dizzy Gillespie-style of playing the trumpet. Even today, Faddis' technique and range is mind blowing and he must have caused quite a stir at that time. But he's not all show all the time as his jazz vocabulary of blues and blues gestures is deep and for this, he's one of them. Budd Johnson (1910-1984) plays tenor and Bari and though he is schooled in Swing, he is highly informed by bebop. His experience is vast having played in the big bands of Earl Hines, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Quincy Jones, and even with Gil Evans. His baritone playing is really terrific and something I feel he should be better known for.
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Budd Johnson
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Frank Wess (1922-2013) is known for his tenure with Count Basie. He also incorporated the flute as a doubling instrument, though he doesn't do that here. Pianist John Bunch (1921-2010) is another swing to bop player with sound based in Teddy Wilson and a vocabulary that encompasses bebop aesthetics. I didn't hear any stride from Bunch, but he maintains the texture based approach of stride players. Jo Jones (1911-1985) rounds out the band on drums. His style is fundamentally swing as he doesn't comp a lot behind soloists and primarily sticks to a time-keeping role.
The session is relaxed and features three tunes and excellent playing by all. Hinton, of course, is heavily featured, playing melodies on "Blue Skies" and "It Had To Be You". On the former, he trades fours with Jones who sticks to the hi-hat. Faddis comes out running with upper register lines and breath-taking double time lines. Frank Wess has a deep tone like Coleman Hawkins or even Sonny Rollins, but seems to improvise more freely in a Lester Young sense. His language is a bit more modern on this one.
On "It Had To Be You", Bunch's solo is a highlight gently moving from idea to idea and quoting Ellington along the way. Budd Johnson's Bari solo is excellent, showing off some technique a great sound and good energy. Faddis is more restrained here focusing on bluesy vocal-like gestures while varying his volume and range.
The slow "Blues for the Judge" is a dowhome blues with Hinton taking the last two bars of the form on the head. His solo is excellent showcasing his wonderful tone in the lower and upper register, quoting Ellington's "Things Ain't What They Used To Be". Everybody gets one chorus on the blues, so he doesn't stray from walking and keeps things simple. Bunch quotes Monk on this one, while Faddis sits on the #11 for a while on the chord. Not like it's offensive or anything, but no one else really plays those upper structures on this album. Harmonically, it is still set in the Swing Era, but technique and phrasing is bebop.
The sextet is nice, but the duo with Ben Webster is a gold mine. Jazz bass and sax duets were not common at that time. I believe the first instance in recorded history was on June 9, 1945 when Don Byas and Slam Stewart played a few tunes together at Town Hall when the rest of the band couldn't make the gig. Eric Dolphy recorded a few duets with bassist Richard Davis in the early 1960's, but other than that I don't know of any bass-sax duets from that era. Dolphy/Davis worked in a more modern context, but with two Swing era giants it must have been quite different: the laughing between the two at the end of "All The Things You Are" says it all.
"Sophisticated Lady" begins with Hinton playing a short intro and then Webster is in with the melody. In this setting, his intimate sound just shines right through and he very much sticks to the original melody---stopping to play a phrase at the end of each section. Such a rich sound and his vibrato, which is very quiet, is tempered with the sound of air moving through his mouthpiece. Hinton takes the first solo and he doesn't play lines. Instead his approach is more accompaniment-like as he fills the space while maintaining the time. It's as if he were playing straight eighth notes. Webster's background lines are just brilliant, moving from bass notes to chord tones. His own solo is excellent and he never gets really loud. His ideas are very simple and harmonically he's in the key center. On tonic chords I hear the sixth at cadential points reinforcing his pre-bebop sense of harmony.
"All The Things You Are" is played uptempo, but Webster still sounds as intimate as he did on the ballad! Hinton's solo relies on quarter note triplets and doesn't stray faraway from the bass line. Meanwhile, Webster's comping pattern is superb. After they end the tune, there's a sense of relief as the two musicians finally made it to the end. Musicians of that era relied on the drums and the piano for the time and harmony and such exposure must have felt uncomfortable.
"Stridin' with Ben" features Webster playing stride piano. It's not really a song, although there is a semblance that he is playing a tune, instead there are two performances or jams. I believe it was recorded in Hinton's home and the tape was left running and we can hear Webster thinking through a few things and trying stuff out. His playing is quite good actually and even with the occasional wrong note, it's still charming. Harmonically, he's mostly centered around the I chord, but in his right hand he plays blues and melodies. He manages to just keep that balance between the hands and I think that prevents him from playing through a tune. They both end rather abruptly, but Webster's improvisations are spirited. Legend has it that he used to battle on piano with Benny Carter and I find it very interesting that both men played stride as their double instrument: it speaks to how they hear the music in terms of feel and function.
Milt Hinton recorded an early bass feature in 1939 with Cab Calloway entitled "Pluckin' The Bass" showing that even then he was skilled enough to be featured at a time when most bassists weren't. His career is vast and there are too many recordings to mention. He is also well known for his slap technique which is not featured at all on this recording. He was well recognized as a legend during his lifetime and even appeared on the tonight show in the early 1990s. He is still remembered today as his papers are kept at Oberlin University, Recently too, the International Society of Bassists had an online panel on his legacy documenting his life, his music, and others' experiences with Hinton.
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