Milt Hinton was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1910. His career spans the gamut of jazz history, and while he has been part of that history, he has also been documenting it - because along with his bass, Milt has always carried a camera.

Growing up in Chicago, Milt Hinton played bass with legends Freddie Keppard, Zutty Singleton, Jabbo Smith, Eddie South and Erskine Tate. Sixteen years with Cab Calloway found him alongside Chu Berry, Dizzy Gillespie and Ben Webster and making records with Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, Ethel Waters and Teddy Wilson. After touring with Louis Armstrong in 1953, Milt began fifteen busy years in the New York studios working with Paul Anka, Harry Belafonte, Tony Bennett, Sam Cooke, Sammy Davis, Jr., Patti LaBelle, Paul McCartney, Bette Midler, Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand, to name just a few. Today Milt is still active lecturing about his photographs and teaching bass students of all ages.

All the while Milt's been touring and strumming and slapping, he's been snapping photos of his friends and colleagues. The Milton J. Hinton Photographic Collection now totals approximately 45,000 negatives. What began as a hobby has become a pictorial history of jazz. OverTime is a sampling of his photographs selected by Milt, his long-time friend sociologist David G. Berger, and Holly Maxon, a paper conservator who specializes in works of art and photographs.

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