Magic City
Regular price
€91.99
A01=Burgin Mathews
African American fraternal organizations
African Americans in the South
Alabama
Alabama State Teachers College
Alabama State University
Author_Burgin Mathews
Bama State Collegians
Bebop
Big band music
Birmingham
Black education in the South
Black educators
Black Nightlife
Black Social Life
Category=AVA
Category=AVLP
Category=JBSL
Category=NHK
Civil Rights Movement in Alabama
Ensley
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Erskine Hawkins
Jazz
Jazz and education
Jazz in Harlem
Jazz musicians
Jo Jones
John T. "Fess" Whatley
Minton's Playhouse
Minton’s Playhouse
New York
Origins of jazz
Prince Hall Masons
Segregation
Segregation in the South
Sun Ra
Swing music
Teddy Hill
The Erskine Hawkins Orchestra
The Great Migration
Tuxedo Junction
Product details
- ISBN 9781469676876
- Weight: 272g
- Dimensions: 155 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 28 Nov 2023
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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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.
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.
Burgin Mathews is a writer, a radio host, and the founding director of the nonprofit Southern Music Research Center.
