Doc: The Story of a Birmingham Jazz Man tells the life story of jazz elder statesman Frank “Doc” Adams, highlighting his role in Birmingham, Alabama’s, historic jazz scene. A compelling work of oral history, Doc brings to life Adams’s warm and funny, inspiring storytelling voice, tracing a personal adventure that parallels the history of jazz and shimmers with the joy of pure swing.
PRAISE FOR DOC:
“Frank Adams’s account of his life as a musician in Birmingham is fascinating on its own, with his rich stories of life on the road, the bands of Duke Ellington and Sun Ra, and the fabled music teacher Fess Whatley. But his memories of the development of the city’s culture, the role of African American educational institutions, life under segregation, and the struggle for civil rights give this fine book an epic feel, and show us sides of Birmingham that historians have missed.”
— John Szwed, author of Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World and Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra
ORDER IT TODAY:
— from Bookshop.org
— from the University of Alabama Press
— from Amazon
… or (best of all) call your local bookseller!
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
From 2009 to 2011, Burgin Mathews recorded over 150 hours of oral history interviews with Frank Adams, both at Adams’s home in Birmingham’s Smithfield neighborhood and at Adams’s office at the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. The 2012 book Doc drew directly from those interviews to present Adams’s story in his own unmistakable storytelling voice.
Extensive audio excerpts from those original oral history interviews are now available in the online archive of the Southern Music Research Center. Additional materials from Birmingham’s jazz history — including photographs, recordings, ephemera, and more — are available throughout the archive.
BURGIN MATHEWS 
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