Magic City

Magic City is the story of one of American music’s essential unsung places: Birmingham, Alabama, birthplace of a distinctive and influential jazz heritage. In a telling replete with colorful characters, iconic artists, and unheralded masters, Burgin Mathews reveals how Birmingham was the cradle and training ground for such luminaries as big band leader Erskine Hawkins, cosmic outsider Sun Ra, and a long list of sidemen, soloists, and arrangers. He also celebrates the contributions of local educators, club owners, and civic leaders who nurtured a vital culture of Black expression in one of the country’s most notoriously segregated cities. In Birmingham, jazz was more than entertainment: long before the city emerged as a focal point in the national civil rights movement, its homegrown jazz heroes helped set the stage, crafting a unique tradition of independence, innovation, achievement, and empowerment.

Blending deep archival research and original interviews with living elders of the Birmingham scene, Mathews elevates the stories of figures like John T. “Fess” Whatley, the pioneering teacher-bandleader who emphasized instrumental training as a means of upward mobility and community pride. Along the way, he takes readers into the high school band rooms, fraternal ballrooms, vaudeville houses, and circus tent shows that shaped a musical movement, revealing a community of players whose influence spread throughout the world.

PRAISE FOR MAGIC CITY:

“Magic City is destined to become a crucial book in jazz history, African American cultural politics, the sonic geographies of cities, and the history of the South.”

— Charles L. Hughes, author of Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South

“One of the many virtues of Burgin Mathews’ fascinating and rewarding book is his examination or rather exhumation of the “Magic City” … Well-written, thoroughly researched and documented, with arresting photographs, Magic City is an original and valuable contribution to jazz historiography.”

— Jazz Journal

“An invaluable description of the twentieth-century jazz scene emanating from an often-overlooked location . . . Magic City . . . reminds us that music—and culture in general—is not made up of what reaches the history books, but instead exists in the everyday: the performers, audiences, and events that constitute daily life, even when no one is documenting it. Furthermore, Mathews’s emphasis on the concurrent role of Birmingham in jazz music and the struggle for Black civil rights reminds us of the importance of music beyond a purely aesthetic interpretation—it is instead the core of humanity, in all its messiness.”

— Journal of Southern History

“An indispensable source for jazz aficionados and anyone interested in Birmingham history.”

— Alabama Writers’ Forum

“Birmingham, Alabama may seem an unlikely cradle of jazz. And yet Sun Ra was born there, and music teacher John T. “Fess” Whatley trained generations of Birmingham musicians who went on to make enormous contributions working alongside the likes of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and more. Magic City tells an essential story of American music.”

— David Menconi, author of Oh, Didn’t They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music

“Magic City is impressively researched and gracefully written by an author who clearly loves his topic. . . . [It] will be of interest to readers hoping to learn more about jazz and the wider history of music in America, but also readers who want to learn more about the communities and individuals who made Black Birmingham a vibrant and innovative place.”

— BirminghamWatch

“A fascinating history.”

— WICN radio

“Magic City pulls back the curtain to reveal how Birmingham launched the careers of jazz greats like Erskine Hawkins, Jo Jones, and Sun Ra. Through interviews, photographs, and letters, Burgin Mathews shows how within a segregated southern city, “Fess” Whatley, a high school band teacher, inspired and trained some of the greatest jazz artists of the twentieth century. Magic City is a long awaited book that forever changes how we understand jazz and its roots in the American South.”

— Bill Ferris, author of Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues and The Storied South: Voices of Writers and Artists

ORDER IT TODAY:

— from Bookshop.org

— from UNC Press

— from Amazon

… or (best of all) call your local bookseller!

PLAYLISTS, ARTIFACTS, AND EXTRAS:

Visit the Southern Music Research Center’s Magic City exhibit to access playlists, photos, previously unreleased recordings, supplemental materials, and more.