Birmingham Jazzman: “Doc” Frank Adams

Frank Adams—jazzman, teacher, scholar and wise elder—is a Birmingham treasure. A community fixture known widely as “Doc,” he is, among other things, a walking and talking encyclopedia of Birmingham jazz. In his earliest days he studied under two great bandleaders, Lincoln Elementary’s William Wise Handy (a nephew to W.C. Handy, the legendary “Father of the Blues”) and Industrial High School’s hugely influential John T. “Fess” Whatley. In his high school years, he joined Sonny Blount’s band, before Blount left Birmingham and became Sun Ra. In 1945 Adams enrolled at Howard University, where with a group of friends he founded the Howard Swingmasters. In the years that followed, he played with some of the towering figures of jazz—most notably Duke Ellington—before returning to Birmingham as a bandleader and educator in his own right.

In 1978 Adams was in the first group of inductees to the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. When, in 1993, the Hall of Fame opened its museum in the Carver Theater, Adams became tour guide, and today he continues to offer personalized tours four days a week, coloring his historical narration with lively first-person anecdotes and, on his clarinet or saxophone, musical interjections and elaborations. Eighty-two this February, Adams keeps an active schedule as a musician, teacher, storyteller, and dogged preserver of Birmingham’s unique jazz heritage.

Adams’ father, Oscar, was a prominent leader in Birmingham’s African American community, from 1906 to 1934 acting as editor and publisher of the Birmingham Reporter, one of the South’s leading black newspapers; his column, “What Negroes Are Doing,” ran in the Birmingham News from 1918 to 1946. The elder Adams was also active—on local, national, and even international levels—in a number of civic organizations and fraternal societies, serving as chancellor to the Knights of Pythias and extension secretary to the A.M.E. Zion Church. He served briefly as president of the Colored Citizen’s League, which worked to better race relations in Birmingham, and acted also as chairman to Birmingham’s Four Minute Men during World War I. For a time he owned the Black Barons, Birmingham's Negro League baseball team, and Frank Adams remembers watching the team's "magic" from prime seats. Doc Adams’ older brother—Oscar, Jr.—gave the young Frank his first music lesson; later this Oscar would become the first African American justice to serve on Alabama’s Supreme Court.

The brothers had learned young to dream big. “I remember one time,” Doc says: “my dad wrote something in his newspaper that offended the Ku Klux Klan. He said: in the future, what did he hope for his children to be? And he said Oscar would be the president of the United States—that’s back in 1930! And I would be the secretary general, next to the president. It was just out of the question at that time to even mention the president of the United States—and he put it in his newspaper!”

Death threats followed: a bullet in the mail, and a note to get out of town. “In his next article,” Adams remembers, “he responded: ‘I wish I could oblige you. But I have nowhere else to go.’ He said, “I hope to be buried out there in Grace Hill funeral home. If I had another place to go, I would, but I’m staying here. So come and get me.’

“That,” remembers the son, “was his temperament.”

While his brother followed a successful path in Alabama politics, Frank Adams became another kind of leader: a musical journeyman whose adventures in the world led him ultimately back home, to Birmingham. Like his father, he recognized that his roots here were deep and wouldn’t be severed. For decades now, Doc Adams has served as mentor to several generations of Birmingham students, and has inspired countless Hall of Fame visitors with his eloquence, insight, and passion.

Pavo is proud to present, in this issue and the next, excerpts from a series of interviews with Dr. Frank Adams.

“The first note I made was a G.”

The first thing I remember about music is picking up my brother’s clarinet. He was already in the elementary school band. I picked his horn up off the bed and puffed up my jaws and made a terrible sound. He took it away from me and said, “Roll your lip back, and don’t puff out your jaws like that!” The first note I made was a G. And that started me on my career in playing. When I got to the elementary school I could already play everything that the band played because I lived about a block away from the school, and I could hear them practice. I’d take the instrument and try to find the note.

One Easter—I always think about this when Easter comes around—Dad said, “You boys are going to play ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ in Sunday School.” It was just about three weeks away, and my mother just panicked because she knew that we didn’t even know hardly how to put the horns together; we’d just started.

She said, “They can’t do that, that’s going to be so humiliating. Why would you let those boys go up there and embarrass themselves like that, Oscar?” And he said, “They’re going to do it. So don’t worry.” Said, “I want it as a duet.”

“How could they play it, they don’t even know the melody of ‘The Old Rugged Cross’?”

He said, “They’ll do it.”
She’d say, “Put your finger down there; put your finger up here.” And she wouldn’t know a note if it had an overcoat on, and walked up and said, “I’m a note!” But there we were, and we didn’t know any better.
So we packed up and went to the church down on the corner there, the Metropolitan Church, and we went down to the basement. There was a lady by the name of Elmonia B. Nix, I never will forget it. And the piano was one of those pianos that, if you struck it hard, you’d think that a rat would jump out of it. It was out of tune and all of it: the keys were tarnished where someone had been pounding on them and knocked the ivory off—I know you’ve seen pianos like that, too. It was terrible. Our instruments had all kinds of rubber bands around them, you know, to hold them together. So we went down there, and we worked for about forty-five minutes. She’d say, “Put your finger down there; put your finger up here.” And she wouldn’t know a note if it had an overcoat on, and walked up and said, “I’m a note!” But there we were, and we didn’t know any better.

We came out of there, and believe it or not, we could play “The Old Rugged Cross” as a duet.

That Sunday, Easter morning, he announced—because he was the Superintendent of Sunday School for twenty-seven years—he said: “Oscar and Frank are going to play ‘The Old Rugged Cross.’”

Man, we stood up there. We looked at each other. My mother was just cringing.

Miss Elmonia Nix played a few chords, man, and we struck into “The Old Rugged Cross.” We played it so well that the church stood up, and gave us a standing ovation. And that sort of hooked me on music.

“The Great Fess Whatley”

Industrial High School—later renamed A.H. Parker—was the first high school for blacks in Birmingham. John T. “Fess” (for “Professor”) Whatley taught the printing class and led the band. Whatley was known far beyond Birmingham as a consummate bandleader and strict disciplinarian, whose students arrived on time, dressed sharp, and played their solos pitch-perfect, note for note. Several of Whatley’s students became professional jazzmen—among them, Erskine Hawkins, whose “Tuxedo Junction” would become a jazz standard.

Numerous Whatley students found their way to New York City, and, among the top bandleaders, the reputation of Birmingham and its influential educator grew. Artists like Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton knew that Birmingham players trained by Whatley would be professional and punctual—and knew, most importantly, that they would be able to read music, a training that even the country’s best players often lacked. If the history of jazz in Birmingham has been under-documented, so, too, has the history of Birmingham in jazz been ignored—during the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, Birmingham musicians, most of them Whatley-trained, brought their shared heritage into the heart of jazz communities across the country. Says Adams: “In New York City, you could go and stand on the corner: and if you were there about fifteen minutes you would see somebody from Birmingham, a musician, come up, and they’d say, ‘Where are you staying, man?’ and take you someplace to stay.”

Now, when I got to the high school, it was during the ‘40s, during the second World War. Professor Fess Whatley, all of his musicians had gone off to the military—Tuskegee Army Band, Navy Band, all across the country, they volunteered for those places—so he had to find somebody to take their place.

This is where I think a big change came in my life, because I had a good passion for music, but I had no interest in playing jazz music. You know, I didn’t even listen to it. But Professor Whatley called me in his office and said, “You’re going to take the place of Mr. Amos Gordon, my lead saxophone player.” I didn’t know what he was talking about—but I knew that I didn’t want to be in this band. All the disciplinary problems at the school would come to Fess Whatley, and I had heard about how ferocious he was about this discipline thing. I had heard never to even go near him, you see. So when he gave me that demand, he said: “Go tell your mother that she’s going to have to buy you a saxophone. And you’re going to play in my band. I heard that you could read music pretty good”—well, I had a good memory; I couldn’t read that much, but I could memorize what I played, you see.

I went home and I told my mom: I made up a story. I said, “Mom, that man wants me to play in that orchestra, his Vibraphone”—I couldn’t even pronounce it— "his Vibraphone Cathedral Orchestra; and they stay up at night and they’re much older than I am, and I don’t want to do it, because”—this is the biggest tale—“I want to make the A-B Honor Roll.” In high school, you know. “And this is my first year, and I really just want to play in the marching band. But those fellas—they’re up all night and they’re sleepy all the time, Mom...”

...his discipline in Industrial High School—so far as the teaching of reading music, the exactness of it—was what appealed to Benny Goodman, and Cab Calloway, and Duke Ellington and all of those people, because they knew that if you had been trained by Whatley you would be well disciplined...She was knitting and didn’t pay much attention—I didn’t think she paid much attention. And I thought I could win this one because it was during the aftermath of the Depression, and I said: “Times are hard, Mom, and my brother Oscar and I have clarinets and we don’t want saxophones. And I don’t know anything about a saxophone, I don’t want to learn anything about a saxophone. And they cost too much, Mom.” I said, “You and Dad sacrifice for us”—I could make a speech, you know.

She put that knitting down and she said, “Listen. Not only are you going to play a sax—you’re going to go back and tell Professor Whatley you’re going to do everything he tells you to do.”

I was just utterly, utterly defeated. I didn’t know what to do. It felt like a prison sentence.

See, Professor Whatley was the disciplinarian supreme. But his discipline in Industrial High School—so far as the teaching of reading music, the exactness of it—was what appealed to Benny Goodman, and Cab Calloway, and Duke Ellington and all of those people, because they knew that if you had been trained by Whatley you would be well disciplined; you wouldn’t cut up crazy, you would be on time—disciplined—because you would think about Professor Whatley. And the main thing was you were able to read the music quickly.

I remember at the Elks’ Rest, they had the senior prom. And guess where I was: sitting up there, playing in Fess Whatley’s orchestra. I played in the band my senior prom. It was understood, if you’re a musician, you play. That was first; it was like, “Hey: you can dance some other time.” No matter who the girl is, you can’t dance; you’ve got to be sitting up there playing. But I understood that.

He instilled into all of us that the music, that was what you were supposed to do. When we would go to rich people’s houses and they would offer us food, he said, “No. You don’t forget what you came for. You’re not the guest, you’re performers.”

We would go to Tuskegee, we would go to Mississippi, we would go to all those different places. We were going to Columbus, Mississippi, on the weekends, and the distance was pretty long at that time, you know: cars didn’t go as fast as they do now. But he had this big Cadillac—he had three of them, but this was the one that he traveled in—and if you look at those old cars, they had a little seat in between the back seat and the front seat that you pull out: a little bitty seat that you could sit in. Now, anytime we would go somewhere, he would write down: you sit here, you sit here, and you sit here. He would always have this seating arrangement for the band: where you sit, who would drive, and all that kind of thing. That was good up to the point that he put me between two of these little seats, which was severely uncomfortable—and I was small, but you’re sitting there going to Columbus, Mississippi, and back! And it occurred every time we would go out of town; that was just about every week

So it got in my mind—I guess it would get into somebody’s mind to say something, but they might not have said anything—but in that instance I suffered so much, I did a thing that probably changed my whole life. I asked Mr. Whatley: why could he not rotate.

Little fella, you know—the great Fess Whatley! He was speechless.

And I repeated: I said, “Why don’t you rotate the seats, Mr. Whatley?” I said, “I’ve been in that seat for five months now. And it hurts.”

Man, he didn’t say anything.

I came home the next day. My mom was crying. I said, “Mom, what’s the matter?” I had never seen my mom cry like that.

She said, “Mr. Whatley was by here.” This was during the school day. “And he said what you said to him. And he said that you’re just an awful little brat, and you’re not going to be successful—said that if you didn’t change your ways, you were going to bust Hell wide open!”

Man.

When my dad came home, he said: “What did you say he said? Give me the phone.”
Uh-oh, boy. I didn’t know what was going to happen.

He didn’t hesitate. He called up Professor Whatley. He said, “Whatley.” He didn’t say,
When my dad came home, he said: “What did you say he said? Give me the phone.”
Uh-oh, boy. I didn’t know what was going to happen.“Professor Whatley,” he said, “Whatley.” My dad was a terror when he got upset. He said, “What the devil are you coming down to my house, telling my wife? You’d better not ever do that again!” Said, “If he hadn’t said something to you, he wouldn’t have been a son of mine! Don’t you ever, as long as you live, come by my house for anything, especially telling my wife something about my son. And another thing is, you need to keep your behind up there teaching those children!”

Now, nobody talked to Fess Whatley like that! But he did. Good God Almighty—I didn’t know what was going on. And he said, “My son, I understand, is a good little musician. And he doesn’t have to play with your band any longer.”

BAM, man.

I said, “Wow.”

The next day—I don’t know how it happened—but the phone rang. And guess who it was.

Sun Ra.

Sun Ra from outer space. And he said: “Mrs. Adams, I want Frank to play in my Intergalactic Arkestra.” And to my surprise, my mom said: “Of course.” Now, Mom was Missionary Society president and—nothing wrong with Sun Ra, but everybody knew he just wasn’t normal; he was weird, man, and for my mom to say that—.

Dad came home. You never could tell what Dad would do. Dad said, “I don’t see anything wrong with the boy playing with Sun Ra.”

Of course, Whatley called me back after reflecting on what he had done; he said, “Come on back.” So it wasn’t but a couple of weeks that I was playing with both of them, that made me have two bands.

“Sun Ra from Outer Space”

Sun Ra—originally Sonny Blount—would later become famous as a jazz pioneer and avant-garde hero, continually stretching the limits of jazz into cosmic dimensions. By the 1930s he had already developed in Birmingham the reputation of an eccentric—he claimed, always, to have come from outer space—and was known also as an innovative, respected bandleader. In 1946 he left Birmingham for Chicago, later relocating to New York City; sometime in the ‘50s he became “Sun Ra.” Before graduating from high school, Adams found himself a member of one of Blount’s first bands. “That,” Adams recalls, “was the greatest experience: that really changed my life.”

Sun Ra lived across the street from the old terminal station in this rickety, raggedy house: I mean, it was terrible. But when you got in there, he was so full of what he was doing. He really believed in this outer space thing, and he talked about it all the time. He would say this was this and that, and he rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed, till his band was just a jewel—I mean, it was just a jewel—and he had people in his band that weren’t great readers of music, but they could catch on quick. They had this complete musicianship about them.

Man, Sun Ra: that was jazz music, man. Those guys didn’t wear tuxedos, they wore what they could. They played all over the housing projects. And that was a change in my life. I found out, there was a discipline in Sun Ra’s band that you wouldn’t perceive, just like there was a discipline in Duke Ellington’s band. Whatley’s thing was just rigid discipline, which was okay, but what I found out was, in Sun Ra’s band, he had his own concept. In Whatley’s band we were strictly doing what was proper. The dynamics and all that kind of stuff wouldn’t be changed: you weren’t allowed to get up and play a solo unless it was written down. If you could play “In the Mood,” it would sound exactly like Glenn Miller. The tempo would be the same and the solos, if they were written, he would want you to play just like that. And he was very successful with that. But, Blount, you could stumble over something, and then go back and try it again. And it was the sort of thing where you could talk to each other; you could have fun. You would sit there sometimes all night. Then if somebody was making a mistake you could stop and help him, there isn’t anybody getting mad about it.

Man, Sun Ra: that was jazz music, man. Those guys didn’t wear tuxedos, they wore what they could. Sun Ra was one that would take liberties on things. And then, he was writing his music. Sun Ra took pride in who he was as a creator of music. And that was probably why he felt that he came from another planet. Nobody knows where he came from, you know: he was just there. I understand he went to A&M College for a while and just dropped out, and started his band. And that was all he did. Professor Whatley was into printing and other things, you know, but Sun Ra was a person that, morning and night, it was music.

Sun Ra was a free flower—he was just blowing in the wind, you know.

Sonny said, “What’s in you is going to come out. And you’ll be able to hear it.”

So, one day we were right across the street at the USO. And he looked at me and said, “You got it.” That meant to take the solo. Well, I thought I could do something, man—I knew little marches and church songs, but that didn’t fit in with jazz. I had discovered a few things. I got out there to the microphone and I thought I was going to do everything but … my mind just locked, and I couldn’t do anything but repeat over and over again one little passage. People started leaving the dance floor! It was horrible. I knew when I sat down it would be terrible, because they would not only be losing money on me—because I was messing up and people were leaving—but all the good players would have a bad feeling toward me, which could ruin his band.

When I finally sat down, I knew that that would be the end of my playing with him. But what happened is, he looked at me, and after everybody left he told me: “What you played was wonderful.” Now, that would have to be a tale—because all I did was play the same thing over and over again; that wasn’t beautiful at all, that was just a monotony of sound. When he told me that, it made me confirm that, absolutely, he is just as crazy as anybody says he is!

But he said to me that it sounded perfect, it sounded magnificent. And I was so hungry for something like that, that it made it real. I just came up out of my chair and floated all the way home. I walked by the barbecue stand, I didn’t even smell the barbecue, man. I ended up at home in bed, tapping my foot. And I said, “Hey—I’m a real jazz musician!” Because Sonny was a jazz musician and I respected him, and he said it.

That built up my confidence. So I started going around him and playing.

He’d say, “Listen at that.” And, “Listen at that.” And you’d listen and all of a sudden, you don’t know what day it is, but when you’re in the right environment, around the right people, you’re like a sponge. And you just take it, take it, take it in—and you get better and better. It’s just like what would happen to anybody if you’re in a particular environment. If I were born in China I would speak Chinese, you see; and that’s the way it was in this environment. As I say, you don’t know when it happens. But then, what you do is you accept, and an exchange goes on between you and someone else; then you got it. You’ve got what you need.

He came here and he brought one drum, a little snare drum, and a fella with him that, if you saw them both, you would determine that they were crazy, right off.That was the environment he provided in this old broken-down home. And he’d talk about the moon and Mars and Jupiter. He’d say, “Everybody, if you get to fussing and fighting, that’s okay: because I’ll just call my spaceship, and go to Venus, and leave you all here, you see. And you don’t all know, it’s a blessing to have me around, because I’m the true maker of music.” All that kind of stuff, and you know it’s not all true—you think it’s not all true—but when you see the guy living like that...

Did I tell you about when he came here to get his award? Well, he came here to be put in the Hall of Fame—in fact, I was the one that recommended him. In Birmingham they knew about him, but he was just a weird entity to them. He came here and he brought one drum, a little snare drum, and a fella with him that, if you saw them both, you would determine that they were crazy, right off. But there he was, at this Hall of Fame thing.

This was back in, let’s see, it must have been 1973 that Sun Ra was inducted. It was a beautiful affair. They had Jo Jones, the great drummer; that’s the night Jo Jones was inducted. They had a lot of the big ones that are in the Hall of Fame now. And after the event was over—I hadn’t spoken to Sun Ra for years; in fact, I doubt he knew I nominated him—but on the way out, I saw him at the piano. His back was turned to me.

I said, “Sun Ra”—“Sonny,” I called him—“Sonny, do you know who this is?” He didn’t say anything. I said, “Do you know who this is?”

He said, “Of course. You’re my saxophone player. You’re Frank Adams.” Then he turned around in his seat. And this is where I had to unload a lot of things on him: ego, you know. I said, “Listen, man, I have played with Duke Ellington’s orchestra; I’m supervisor of music for Birmingham schools; and I made these records, I’m making recordings and all; and my wife is a teacher, she’s out in the county teaching fifth grade.” And I said, “I’ve got a son since I saw you; my son, he’s at Boston University, playing in the symphony.” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

He looked at me. You want somebody to say, “Oh, that’s wonderful!” But you know what he said?

“That’s a disgrace.”

I felt like a corkscrew going down in the ground. My ego had been shattered, man. He said, “That’s a disgrace.” What do you mean? I said, now he’s going to tell me—this weird creature—he’s going to be telling me something about my life is a failure!

We’re staring at each other. And I started thinking: he thought that I should never have been away from his band. That was all that mattered with him. I should still be playing in his Intergalactic Orchestra! You know, that was what I was here for: not to have a family, not to do anything. That was his world, see.

And I remember, my mind started going back, years back, when we played a dance in Talladega College. He had an old raggedy car that he had rented from somebody. And he had one of these things that had a trailer to it, an old wooden, broken trailer with a top; and all of the instruments were put in that trailer. He drove all the way out to Talladega College. He had one car, so it was cramped in that car.

We went out and played. And instead of waiting around a while after we finished, everybody ran and jumped in that car, and squeezed in there. By the time he got the money and all, there was no room for the leader. So he crawled back in the back of that little wagon back there, with all the cymbals and drums and stuff falling on top of him.

By the time he got the money and all, there was no room for the leader. So he crawled back in the back of that little wagon back there, with all the cymbals and drums and stuff falling on top of him.
I guess I wasn’t the only one, but I felt bad about that. You know, I had had some religious training, and my folks had taught me to respect leadership, regardless of race or whatever—that was the leader, man. And here you got him back there like somebody going through Jerusalem on the back of a donkey or something! So I said, “Man, this is going to get everybody terminated. Everybody in this band will be fired tomorrow.”

When we got back—listen—he said not a mumbling word about it, man. He didn’t say one word! And I always put things in perspective: I’ve been around Lucky Millinder, Andy Kirk, Duke Ellington, Fess Whatley, anybody you can name—but I’ve never seen a person like that. Duke Ellington was a tremendous guy. Fess Whatley was, too. Count Basie was. But there never was another Sun Ra. And in your lifetime, if you ever meet a person like that, that would ride back in one of those things like that, and do everything in his life to succeed—he can’t be stopped. You understand? You can’t stop him. He’s not interested in any clothes; any wives; he’s not interested in anything, but his music. That’s why he could conceive of himself coming from another planet: because nobody’s like him. He really believed that.

That was Sun Ra.