Remembering Alberta Adams
My friend Alberta Adams was 97 when she passed away this past Christmas morning. I am lucky enough to say that I was her manager, bandleader & drummer for over twenty years. She was born in July, 1917, in Indianapolis to an alcoholic mother and moved to Detroit as a child and was raised by an aunt. Alberta started her entertainment career in Detroit's Black Bottom district, working as a tap dancer in her early 20s and getting her break as a singer when called to fill in for an ailing headliner Kitty Stephenson at Club B & C.
She became a regular at clubs around town in the 1940s, was eventually discovered by Chess Records and cut several singles with the Chicago label in Detroit at United Sound. She had one single on Berry Gordy's Thelma Records and was featured on a TJ Fowler single on the Savoy label. She toured nationally with folks like Louis Jordan, T-Bone Walker and her good friend Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, and also as a blues duo called the Bluesettes with her partner Chubby Newsome, with the Tiny Bradshaw Orchestra.
Her touring days were well behind her by the time we hooked up and she was working here and there around Detroit, with various local blues bands. I was able to get her signed to Ron Levy's Cannonball Records, her first recordings since the 1960s. This led to tours throughout the U.S. and Canada — coast to coast in both countries and as far north as Montreal and as far south as Key West. After two fine CDs for Cannonball, I put out a number of her recordings on my label, Eastlawn Records.
Alberta had a ball. She was never grouchy, never short with anybody at a gig, always happy to meet people and say thank you. We would sometimes drive long periods of time, eight to ten hours in a van, and she'd get up on that stage and kick ass. She was a professional ‘til the end.
She was the last of the old-time blues singers, the great postwar singers who made their mark in the late '40s and early '50s.
Adams is survived by her daughter, Barbara Jean Tinsley, and nine grandchildren. Her son, the Detroit doo-wop singer James Drayton, died in 2001.
RJ Spangler is a Detroit drummer and bandleader who is also Vice President of the Detroit Blues Society.