Frank Adams Describes the Culture of Sun Ra's Birmingham Band

Frank Adams elaborates on his early experiences with Sun Ra. Adams joined Sonny Blount’s band as a teenager in the 1940s, before Blount left Birmingham for Chicago and became famous as Sun Ra. When this interview was recorded in 2012, Adams was the last surviving member of Sun Ra’s early Birmingham band, and his memories offered rare personal access to this period in the life and career of the influential “intergalactic” bandleader.

Here, Mathews asks Adams to elaborate on his first, almost-disastrous public solo as a new member of the Sonny Blount band. (See "Frank Adams Compares the Bands of Fess Whatley and Sun Ra," also in this collection, for more on this incident.) 

This excerpt concludes the first of many weekly interviews Mathews conducted with Adams. The edited transcripts of those interviews formed the basis Adams’s and Mathews’s book, Doc: The Story of a Birmingham Jazz Man (University of Alabama Press, 2012).

This interview was conducted in Frank Adams’s office at the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, Birmingham, Alabama, July 29, 2009. A transcript of the excerpt is included.