Legendary African American jazz bassist and photographer Milt Hinton (1910-2000) tells his compelling life story and illustrates it with more than 260 of his photographs, exquisitely reproduced in this collectors' edition. Hinton's stories - witnessing a lynching as a child in Mississippi, working for Al Capone, breaking the color line in the recording studio - are equal to his celebrated photographs: capturing life on the road with Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday at her last recording date, and personal and professional views of icons such as Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, Dizzy Gillespie, and Barbra Streisand. "Playing the Changes" draws from Hinton and Berger's earlier "Bass Line", but differs significantly from that 1988 classic. Milt's narrative takes up where the earlier story left off, and more than 140 new photographs augment 115 of his best-known images. It also boasts a CD of Milt telling stories and performing music, as well as a discography and filmography.

Author Biography

In 1955, when he was fourteen, David G. Berger asked Milt Hinton for bass lessons - thus beginning a friendship and professional partnership that would last more than forty years. Berger, though, did not follow in his friend's footsteps to become a professional musician; instead he completed a doctorate in sociology and taught at Temple University for thirty years. In 1979, Holly Maxson began organizing Milt's photographs for the first book. Maxson and Berger co-direct the Milton J. Hinton Photographic Collection, and in 2002 they completed their award-winning documentary about Milt's life, Keeping Time: The Life, Music and Photographs of Milt Hinton.