On May 22, 1914, according to legend, Herman Poole Blount was born in the Magic City. He claimed that he came from the planet Saturn. But where did Sun Ra really come from?
The Magic City
After the Civil War, Jones Junction had a population of 100. This junction was the strategic terminus between the North - South railroad line running from Nashville, Tennessee to the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile, Alabama and East - West railroad line between Vicksburg on the Mississippi River to Atlanta, Georgia. After the war, Union officers noticed that the nearby mountains and land had ample supplies of three important minerals: iron ore, coal, and sandstone - the key elements of steel. They knew Jones Junction was particularly unique because it not only had direct access to all the required materials to make steel, it had transport infrastructure needed to get the steel to customers. It wasn’t long before contact was made with existing steel and iron companies, mainly in Pennsylvania, who agreed to finance construction of new iron works. The result was rapid population growth that was “magical”.
In 1871, Jones Junction was incorporated into a new city called Birmingham, named after the industrial city in England known for their iron works. By 1878, there were some 20 major steel and iron making companies and blast furnaces in the region around Birmingham, and the population had grown to 250,000. The expansion from 1881 through 1920 earned Birmingham the nicknames "The Magic City" and "The Pittsburgh of the South".
Around the turn of the century, Mrs. Carrie Tuggle migrated to Birmingham from Eufaula, Alabama, where she grew up and married John Tuggle. Like so many others, they moved to Birmingham to find work and cultural opportunity.
Tuggle Institute
In 1903, Mrs. Tuggle founded the Tuggle Institute, a privately-owned charity to provide safe housing and a good education to orphaned black children.
Here is the Tuggle Institute in 1906. You can barely read the name painted in white above the front door.
The Tuggle institute offered schooling in printing, woodworking, and other industrial arts. Sometime around 1905, Mrs. Tuggle hired Sam “High C” Foster to start a school band. It was one of the first instrumental music programs for black children in the Birmingham area. As the fine reputation of Foster’s program grew, it attracted students from throughout the state. It was here that Foster mentored and trained trumpeters John “Fess” Whatley and Erskine Hawkins. Perhaps most importantly, he taught them how to read music, emphasizing, “Play the music as written.”
Carrie Tuggle’s selfless dedication won her high regard among the citizens of Birmingham. Years later, the institute was purchased by the city Board of Education, who changed the name to Tuggle Elementary School. Here is present day Carrie A. Tuggle Elementary School.
John T. “Fess” Whatley
In 1906, the Whatley family moved to Birmingham so that John and his brother Edward could attend Tuggle Institute. While there, he studied printing, plumbing, and electrical engineering. As rumor has it, young John sold scrap iron to buy his first trumpet and then joined the Tuggle Institute band. After he graduated in 1913, he replace Foster as the bandmaster. Four years later, he left the institute to teach printmaking at Birmingham’s Industrial High School. He was hired by Dr. A. H. Parker, the school’s first principal.
In 1899, a request was put into the Alabama Board of Education to establish a high school for black children. The request was granted. In the Fall, the doors were opened to the first public high school for black children in Birmingham. In fact, it was one of the first in the South. A. H. Parker, for whom the school would later be named, was the school’s first principal and only teacher. In a single room, he taught 18 students; however, by the end of the term, it had already increased to 44. Here is a 1910 picture of the faculty at Industrial High School, with Parker in the middle.
When the school outgrew this arrangement, the city rented a three-story building and it was here formal training began in industrial education. In 1924, additional construction was started on five modern, ivory-stucco buildings seen in the picture below. By 1930, it was one of the four largest black high schools in the U.S., with an enrollment of 2501 students.
Here is a postcard of the Industrial High School with inlaid picture of Dr. A.H. Parker.
The establishment of the Industrial High School was for Parker a dream come true, immortalized in his autobiography, A Dream That Came True.
Parker was awarded the Negro Citizens' Loving Cup for "that citizen that had done the most for his race in 1924". Parker retired as principal of Industrial High School in 1939. He died later that year. In his honor, the school was renamed A. H. Parker High School.
In 1917, John “Fess” Whatley started teaching printmaking at the Industrial High School. In addition to teaching, Whatley organized and directed several extracurricular music ensembles, including a parade band, a concert band, and a dance band. It was in these early days that he earned the nickname, “Fess,” which was short for “Professor.” In 1921, he formed the first black dance orchestra, The Jazz Demons and in 1925 formed the Sax-o-Society Orchestra. These bands composed entirely of young school musicians became very popular and performed at 90% of Birmingham’s social functions - for both black and white audiences. Here’s the 1931 Industrial High School concert band with Whatley on the far right.
Whatley became known as “the maker of musicians”. Many of his pupils at the Industrial High School went on to form their own ensembles and perform with the leading big bands, like Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Fletcher Henderson. An important and often overlooked reason Whatley’s musicians were so popular with the great big bands is they could read music. One of his most famous students was Herman Blount, who enrolled at the Industrial High School in 1929.
Whatley was instrumental in the formation of the ‘Bama State Collegians band in 1929. He encouraged many of his Industrial High students to attend Alabama State and apply for scholarships. Along with Heman Blount, perhaps his most famous protege was Erskine Hawkins. The ‘Bama State Collegians toured extensively and quickly gained a reputation as one of the finest college bands in the country, attracting students from across the country.
Here’s a fun, short 18 minute 2011 movie about Erskine Hawkins and the ‘Bama State Collegians:
Erskine Hawkins went on to write the hit Tuxedo Junction. RCA’s Bluebird label released it in 1939 as Erskine Hawkins and His Orchestra, but it was really the ‘Bama State Collegians.
The song hit #7 on the pop charts. The following year, Glenn Miller & His Orchestra covered it and brought it to #1. I prefer the Hawkins version.
By 1934, while Erskine was off with the Collegians, Herman Blount stayed in Birmingham playing piano in Fess Whatley’s band. Here’s Whatley from that time period.
Whatley, curious to see how his band would do outside the Birmingham area, designated Herman Blount the band leader and sponsored a tour as far south as Florida and north to Columbus, Ohio, Indianapolis, and on up to Chicago. It was in Chicago that Herman Blount became “Sonny” Blount. In order to play the Savoy Ballroom, the Chicago Musician’s Union forced the band’s leader to register a name for the band. The band chose the name “Sonny Blount”. After the tour, “Sonny” returned to Birmingham and soon enrolled at Alabama A & M. He stayed only for a year and returned to Birmingham with a new identity.
Birmingham to Bronzeville
In 1946, the pianist Herman “Sonny” Blount came up on the train from Birmingham to Bronzeville on the South Side of Chicago. Soon after his arrival, Sonny landed a job with Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra at the Club De Lisa on 55th and State, a gig that he held down until mid-1947. Since a young boy, Sonny had been enamored of Fletcher Henderson and throughout his time leading his Arkestra always carried Henderson tunes in his book. When the Red Saunders Band succeeded Henderson, Sonny stayed on, rehearsing the band and refashioning Saunders’s backup arrangements for singers like Laverne Baker, Dakota Staton, Joe Williams, and Sarah Vaughan.
Sometime in 1952, Blount announced that the Creator had ordered him to change his name. He went downtown to the Circuit Court of Cook County and legally became “Le Sony’r Ra.” In addition, he registered a business under the name of “Sun Ra.” Most musicians in Chicago, however, still knew him as Sonny. Early AACM member Jodie Christian remembers,
My first encounter with him, he was playing stride piano, working at the It Club on 55th and Michigan. He was a good pianist, playing conventional piano, stride. We were playing, and Sun Ra was playing as a single pianist, a cocktail piano player opposite us. He hadn’t become “Sun Ra” then. I never heard anybody say that they remember when he started to organize this type of band, the space band. All of a sudden, it was there.
The Space Trio
Chicago’s equivalent of Fess Whatley was Captain Walter Dyett, band master at the famed DuSable High School. Like Whatley, he was a strict disciplinarian and perfectionist and a figure of enormous respect. His students over the years included Dinah Washington, Nat King Cole, Bo Diddley, Gene Ammons, Eddie Harris, Johnny Hartman, John Gilmore and many of the key musicians in the AACM. Again like Whatley, he put together society bands to play in the community. In 1952, Sonny began to seek out younger musicians from Captain Dyett’s DuSable regime to assemble his own band, including drummer Robert Barry and saxophonist Laurdine “Pat” Patrick. He called this group The Space Trio.
Over time, Sun Ra’s band grew to include exciting young musicians such as trombonist Julian Priester; percussionist Jim Herndon; bassist Victor Sproles; trumpeters Art Hoyle, Hobart Dotson, and Dave Young; and saxophonists James Spaulding, Charles Davis, and his two stalwarts, John Gilmore and Marshall Allen. Sonny’s charisma, erudition, and creativity inspired these musicians, who regarded him as their mentor. As Marshall Allen observed, “Sun Ra taught me to translate spirit into music.”
Featuring Marshall Allen on oboe, here’s a favorite of mine to take us a little further down that Big River called Jazz….
As I’ve mentioned before, there’s a three-dimensionality to Willem Breuker’s Kollektief and Sun Ra’s Arkestra that can’t be conveyed through only listening to their LPs or even really by watching videos of their concerts. It is simply something that must be seen to fully comprehend. In the end, since that first time I saw Sun Ra and his Arkestra in California, I have found his life and music…magical.
The world of Sun Ra is deep and wide. So next week, we’ll stay with Sun Ra some more as we travel on that Big River called Jazz - the next stop is Pathways to Unknown Worlds.
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Also, find my playlist on Spotify: From Fred Astaire to Sun Ra.
Feel free to contact me at any time to talk shop. I welcome and encourage that….
Until then, keep on walking….