Since his name sounds like a car manufacturer, and indeed is the name of several companies as well as a festival town in Canada, it makes sense that pianist Sinclair Mills would be related to the Profit family of New York City. Keyboard playing was their game, perhaps not the best way to turn a profit in the real world. Herman Profit, his uncle, was a professional pianist active in the late 19th century. Mills played on the same circuit, in much of the same swinging style of music, as Herman Profit's son, cousin Clarence Profit. Their competition included other jazz pianists from the '30s and '40s New York jazz scene such as Fletcher Smith, Art Hodes, Gene Schroeder, and George Zack. Pianist Mills, no family relation to the trumpeter Lincoln Mills, mostly comes up in historical accounts in reference to the Profit family. He is usually described as "a working pianist" and that was certainly true in 1939. Newspaper write-ups mention his trio at the MacDougal Tavern with the decidedly non-kosher Ham Jackson on guitar and the prestigious Duke Jones on bass. Meanwhile, cousin Clarence Profit's trio was holding forth uptown at Harlem's Yeah Man Club. Through the early '40s, Mills could be heard as a soloist at a spot known as the Pirate's Den, where Hodes also played sets and solo pianists sometimes looked around to find an entire band spontaneously forming around them. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide