Playlist
The Magic City playlist offers a soundtrack to the book, with both classic recordings and archival rarities. Stream it here, in two parts. Individual track notes follow the track listing, below.
MAGIC CITY PLAYLIST: PART 1
1. Erskine Hawkins and his Orchestra: Tuxedo Junction (1939)
2. Haywood Henry: Interview with Phil Schaap (1994)
3. Frank Bunch and his Fuzzy Wuzzies: Fourth Avenue Stomp (1927)
4. Amos Gordon: Interview with Peggy Hamrick (1984)
5. Bessie Smith: St. Louis Blues (1925)
6. Mills Blue Rhythm Band: Savage Rhythm (1931)
7. Sun Ra: Interview with Peter Hinds / Sun Ra Research (1986)
8. Clarence Williams Orchestra: Chocolate Avenue (1933)
9. Jimmy Luverte and his Society Troubadours: That Don't Worry Me (1937)
10. Jo Jones: Gadgets - Effects (1973)
11. Jo Jones: Shoe Shine Boy (1955)
12. Teddy Hill Orchestra: King Porter Stomp (1937)
13. Erskine Hawkins and His Orchestra: After Hours (1940)
14. Frank Adams: Interview with Burgin Mathews (2010)
15. Erskine Hawkins and His Orchestra: Bear Mash Blues (1950)
16. Andrews Sisters: Tuxedo Junction (1940)
17. Minton's Jam Session (Including Joe Guy, Charlie Christian, & Don Byas): "Down On Teddy's Hill" / "I Got Rhythm" (1941)
18. Cootie Williams and His Orchestra: Fly Right (1942)
19. The Ginger Snaps: Keep On Smiling (1943)
20. Paul Bascomb: False Alarm (AK "More Blues—More Beat") (1953)
21. Bonnie Davis: Pepper Hot Baby (1955)
22. Sun Ra and his Arkestra: Hours After (1959)
23. Sun Ra and his Arkestra: The Place of Five Points (1979)
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MAGIC CITY PLAYLIST: PART 2
1. Del Thorne and Her Trio: Down South in Birmingham (1952)
2. Joe Alexander: Blue Jubilee (1960)
3. Robert McCoy: Bye Bye Baby (1962)
4. John Coltrane: Alabama (1963)
5. Jothan Callins: Prayer for Love and Peace (1975)
6. Cleveland Eaton: Kaiser 405 (1975)
7. Nell Carter: Take Me Home (1983)
8. Erskine Hawkins Orchestra Reunion: Tuxedo Junction (1971)
9. Sun Ra and His Jet Set Love Adventure: Live at the Nick (1988)
10. Jose Carr and Friends: Family (2023)
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LINER NOTES: PART ONE
1. Erskine Hawkins and his Orchestra: Tuxedo Junction (1939).“Way down South, in Birmingham; I mean South, in Alabam’; there’s a place where people go, to dance the night away.” This town’s (and this book’s) theme song.
2. Haywood Henry: Interview with Phil Schaap(1994). “Every big band that you can think of, a musician from Birmingham was represented, from Duke on down. Name the band and I’ll name somebody from Birmingham played in the band.”
3. Frank Bunch and his Fuzzy Wuzzies: Fourth Avenue Stomp (1927). An instrumental ode to the heart of Black Birmingham, recorded by one of the city’s first jazz bands.
4. Amos Gordon: Interview with Peggy Hamrick(1984). “You’d just tell somebody, ‘I’m from Birmingham’; they’d put you in first chair.
5. Bessie Smith: St. Louis Blues (1925). The classic recording by Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong, with Fourth Avenue’s Fred Longshaw (Smith’s music director and one-time lover) laying an unlikely foundation on the harmonium.
6. Mills Blue Rhythm Band: Savage Rhythm (1931). An early example of Birmingham’s jazz diaspora at work, this recording by the popular Mills Blue Rhythm Band features four products of the Magic City training: brothers Cas and Theo McCord on tenor sax and clarinet, respectively; Shelton Hemphill, trumpet; and Henry Hicks, trombone. All four went on to long professional careers in jazz.
7. Sun Ra: Interview with Peter Hinds / Sun Ra Research(1986). “As far as creating jazz is concerned, the center is Alabama—not New Orleans.”
8. Clarence Williams Orchestra: Chocolate Avenue (1933). An early Sun Ra (then Sonny Blount) composition, recorded without attribution by New York bandleader and publisher Clarence Williams. Likely named in homage to Birmingham’s Fourth Avenue North, “Chocolate Avenue” reflects Sonny’s lifelong interest in what he called “the whole Black panorama of pure Black culture,” a phenomenon he witnessed “even as a baby in the cradle.”
9. Jimmy Luverte and his Society Troubadours: That Don't Worry Me (1937). A popular local dance band formed by students at Industrial High School and sponsored by Fess Whatley, the Society Troubadours performed under several bandleaders, including Fred Averytt, Jimmy Luverte, and Sonny Blount (Sun Ra). Though Sonny was not likely present at the band’s only recording session, he performed with the group both before and after this date—and the sweet, poppy record offers a glimpse into the musical world that he inhabited.
10. Jo Jones: Gadgets - Effects (1973). In his 1973 album The Drums, legendary drummer Jo Jones offered a history of jazz percussion, intertwined with demonstrations, autobiography, and characteristic humor. Here, he reveals unique insight into his training as a movie-house drummer. Jones apprenticed under Wilson Driver at Fourth Avenue’s Famous Theater, providing sound effects for the silent films onscreen; throughout his celebrated career, he would continue to revel in drawing the widest range of sound and expression from the raw materials of his instrument.
11. Jo Jones: Shoe Shine Boy (1955). It would be impossible to choose a single, representative Jo Jones performance for this playlist. Listen to the first Basie recordings, billed to Jones-Smith Inc., and to any of Basie’s Decca recordings to discover the drummer who redefined the pulse and shimmer of swing. Here we’ve included Jones’s 1955 remake of “Shoe Shine Boy,” the first tune he recorded with the Basie band. This version opens the album The Jo Jones Special, the drummer’s first in the role of bandleader, and the track is significant for reuniting Basie’s original rhythm section with Basie himself on piano.
12. Teddy Hill Orchestra: King Porter Stomp (1937). Teddy Hill’s greatest strength was in identifying and nurturing fresh and forward-thinking talent, first as a bandleader and again as the manager of Minton’s Playhouse. On “King Porter Stomp,” listen for trumpet soloist John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie in his very first recording.
13. Erskine Hawkins and His Orchestra: After Hours (1940). Pianist Avery Parrish’s signature hit—so ubiquitous it was once nicknamed “The New Negro National Anthem”—became a staple of blues and jazz pianists, a jukebox classic for slow-dragging dancers, and an unexpected harbinger of bebop and rock and soul to come.
14. Frank Adams: Interview with Burgin Mathews(2010). “If you lived out in California, you wouldn’t know what in the world bear mash is. And if you lived in New York you wouldn’t know where Dolomite was. That was a little code that endeared Erskine to his home.”
15. Erskine Hawkins and His Orchestra: Bear Mash Blues (1950). First recorded by the Hawkins crew in 1942 and revisited here in 1950, “Bear Mash Blues” was (according to Frank Adams, in the excerpt above) one of the band’s many nods to the folks back home.
16. Andrews Sisters: Tuxedo Junction (1940). For its creators, “Tuxedo Junction” had always been about home, in the most specific sense—but the song’s celebration of and nostalgia for hometown experience was something any wartime American might adopt. Through performances by Glenn Miller, the Andrews Sisters, and many others, a mythic “Tuxedo Junction” became any American’s home: “right back,” its lyrics proclaimed, “where I belong.”
17. Minton's Jam Session (Including Joe Guy, Charlie Christian, & Don Byas): "Down On Teddy's Hill" / "I Got Rhythm" (1941).An historic glimpse into the “house that built bop,” captured on tape by Columbia University student and jazz enthusiast Jerry Newman. Birmingham’s Joe Guy—along with jazz icons Thelonious Monk and Charlie Christian—appears on trumpet; from the silent sidelines, Minton’s manager Teddy Hill presides. For more, we encourage you to track down the rest of Newman’s recordings from Minton’s, all remarkable snapshots a music in transition.
18. Cootie Williams and His Orchestra: Fly Right (1942). Joe Guy introduced this early Monk composition, now regarded as a standard, to bandleader Cootie Williams. The resulting recording reflects the emergence of bebop from the swing tradition, capturing jazz in a key moment in its evolution. Guy’s own central solo also suggests what might have been, were it not for the trumpeter’s looming self-destruction.
19. The Ginger Snaps: Keep On Smiling (1943). From a short “Soundie” musical film, Birmingham singer Ethel Harper and the Ginger Snaps present a bit of cheery wartime propaganda.
20. Paul Bascomb: False Alarm (AKA "More Blues—More Beat") (1953). The powerhouse tenor sax of Paul Bascomb made him a star of the Bama State Collegians / Erskine Hawkins Orchestra and anticipated the jump blues, honking saxophones, and rock and roll of the 1940s and ’50s. Though Bascomb never achieved hit-making status as a bandleader, his best 1950s recordings reflect the exuberance and drive of the emerging rock and roll years.
21. Bonnie Davis: Pepper Hot Baby (1955). Bessemer, Alabama’s Melba Smith (AKA Bonnie Davis) joined the Teddy Hill Orchestra as a singer in 1939. Her own 1943 single, “Don’t Stop Now,” went to #1 on the Harlem Hit Parade, but subsequent records—like “Pepper Hot Baby,” heard here—failed to become hits. Smith and Hill’s brief relationship, meanwhile, produced a daughter: the celebrated singer and actress Melba Moore.
22. Sun Ra and his Arkestra: Hours After (1959)
23. Sun Ra and his Arkestra: The Place of Five Points (1979). If choosing a single, representative track by Jo Jones is impossible, that challenge is infinitely amplified when it comes to Sun Ra. For the sake of this playlist, we’ve selected two titles that allude to Sonny’s Birmingham roots. “Hours After” comes from Sonny’s early, Chicago-era album Jazz in Silhouette and nods, in its title and its structure, to the signature piece of Sonny’s childhood friend, Avery Parrish.
Twenty years later, in 1979—conscious, perhaps, of his induction that year to the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame—Sun Ra recorded three compositions with hometown allusions in their titles: “Magic City Blue,” “West End Side of Magic City,” and (closing out part one of our playlist) “The Place of Five Points.” Listeners should also seek out the sprawling, landmark “Magic City,” Sun Ra’s avant-garde opus and the definitive recorded statement of his New York-era experiments in collective improvisation. Spanning half an hour and stretching musicians and listeners into the bandleader’s furthest-out expressions, it’s a track that is at once essential and, for practical purposes, at odds with a tidy playlist like this one. We trust you’ll look it up.
For latter-day Sun Ra swing, pageantry, and spaceways poetry, stay tuned for the second portion of our playlist…
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LINER NOTES: PART TWO
1. Del Thorne and Her Trio: Down South in Birmingham (1952). Along with 1927’s “Fourth Avenue Stomp” and 1931’s “Chocolate Avenue,” this 1952 track represents the third in a trilogy of musical salutes to the city’s bustling Fourth Avenue scene. The uncredited, Birmingham-bred bandleader and songwriter, Banjo Bill Reese—relocated to Cleveland at the time of this recording—celebrates the strip where “all the joints were jammed,” even namechecking Fourth Avenue’s most popular nightspot, “Little Bob’s Savoy,” in the lyrics.
2. Joe Alexander: Blue Jubilee (1960). Huntington “Big Joe” Alexander got his start in Sonny Blount’s Birmingham band before moving, like Banjo Bill, to Cleveland, where a local nightclub offered a standing $500 reward to any saxophonist who could “outblow” Joe. (None ever did.) Sun Ra and others remembered Big Joe as an unsung great, sidelined by personal demons and addiction. His sole album—1960’s Blue Jubilee, a collaboration with the celebrated pianist Bobby Timmons—offers some glimpse of his prowess.
3. Robert McCoy: Bye Bye Baby (1962). A veteran of Birmingham’s once-active boogie-woogie piano scene, Robert McCoy returned to the studio several times in the early 1960s with Patrick Cather, a young white admirer. Magic City presents the story of their collaboration and friendship, one of the civil rights era’s unique, unlikely, and (previously) untold stories.
4. John Coltrane: Alabama (1963). Unlike other artists in these playlists, John Coltrane was, of course, not from Birmingham. But in the weeks that followed the deadly bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Coltrane crafted this evocative, aching response: a landmark performance by one of American music’s essential masters.
5. Jothan Callins: Prayer for Love and Peace (1975). Birmingham’s Jothan Callins—a participant in the New York Black Arts scene of the 1960s, a Sun Ra disciple, an ethnomusicologist, an educator, and a pioneering chronicler of his hometown’s jazz community—blended social and spiritual consciousness in his 1975 album, Winds of Change. Music, Callins wrote in that album’s notes, could offer “a shining light in the struggle for freedom, respect and dignity,” “promot[ing] positive images for our youth and ourselves.”
6. Cleveland Eaton: Kaiser 405 (1975). One of the last great exports of the Birmingham jazz tradition, bassist Cleve Eaton worked for years with the Ramsey Lewis Trio and Count Basie Orchestra. His own solo work blended traditional jazz with blistering funk and disco grooves. “Kaiser 405” appeared on Eaton’s 1975 album Plenty Good Eaton, released on the Black Jazz label and now a coveted collectors’ item.
7. Nell Carter: Take Me Home (1983). “It’s about going home, down South, to the people who love you. Good God.” In 1983, singer and actress Nell Carter returned to her alma mater to record a homecoming show. The resulting album—sold locally and exclusively as a fundraiser for the Parker High School Choir—presented Carter alongside that choir and the Birmingham Heritage Band. The album concludes with this, its title, track.
8. Erskine Hawkins Orchestra Reunion: Tuxedo Junction (1971). This reunion edition of the Hawkins Orchestra brought together many of the original band members, along with two of those players’ sons, now musicians and torch bearers themselves. An extended, surprisingly funky “Tuxedo Junction” opened the album, recorded live before an audience of family members and friends.
9. Sun Ra and His Cosmo Jet Set Love Adventure: Live at the Nick (excerpt) (1988).Another (sort of) homecoming: Sun Ra and his Arkestra, billed as the Cosmo Jet Set Love Adventure, performed in the summer of 1988 at Birmingham’s favorite, grimy rock-and-roll dive, The Nick. “THE VOYAGER RETURNS,” flyers proclaimed in anticipation. “I’ll build another kind of world!” Sun Ra sang: “A different kind of world! of abstract dreams—and I’ll wait for you.” Recorded by Joe Moudry.
10. José Carr and Friends: Family (2023). Recorded at trumpeter José Carr’s weekly Tuesday-night jam session at Birmingham’s True Story Brewing Company, early 2023, a Jothan Callins composition about homefolks. Released locally on the album José Carr and Friends, Bellasariosonic Productions.