Cholly Atkins, Donald Mills, Avis Andrews, Louis Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, and Keg Johnson, backstage, Earle Theater, Philadelphia

About the Photographer

Hinton, Milton J.

American, 1910 - 2000

Milt Hinton, regarded as the dean of jazz bass players, was born in Mississippi in 1910 prior to moving to Chicago at the age of eleven. Hinton studied under legendary Chicago educator and musician, Nathaniel Clark Smith. Establishing a key role in the Chicago Jazz scene, he sustained a lucrative jazz career which included a fifteen-year stint performing with Cab Calloway. He began photographing in the 1930’s, creating over 60,000 images over six decades. His work examines an extensive list of jazz musicians and friends in a variety of contexts ranging from intimate home settings to scenes on tour. He has held solo exhibitions at the Rhode Island School of Design, RI (1991); The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (1997), and the Denver Museum of Art, CO (1991), among many others.