Magic City

<p><i>Magic City</i> 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.<br/><br/>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.</p>