Burgin Mathews is a writer, teacher, and radio host in Birmingham, Alabama. He has hosted THE LOST CHILD since March 2012.
Burgin is the co-author, with Frank "Doc" Adams, of Doc: The Story of a Birmingham Jazz Man, an oral history published in 2012 by the University of Alabama Press. Drawing from three years of intensive interviews and collaboration, the book tells the story of jazz hero and educator "Doc" Adams, documenting along the way much of Alabama's rich and neglected jazz history.
Burgin is also the creator of Lady Muleskinner Press and its "Magic City Music" series of local musical guidebooks and zines. He has written extensively on Southern music history and is presently at work on a history of Birmingham jazz.
Burgin is the co-author, with Frank "Doc" Adams, of Doc: The Story of a Birmingham Jazz Man, an oral history published in 2012 by the University of Alabama Press. Drawing from three years of intensive interviews and collaboration, the book tells the story of jazz hero and educator "Doc" Adams, documenting along the way much of Alabama's rich and neglected jazz history.
Burgin is also the creator of Lady Muleskinner Press and its "Magic City Music" series of local musical guidebooks and zines. He has written extensively on Southern music history and is presently at work on a history of Birmingham jazz.
Click to purchase Burgin's book, Doc, from Amazon.
You can "like" Doc, and find out more, at Facebook.
“Frank Adams’s account of his life as a musician in Birmingham is fascinating on its own, with his rich stories of life on the road, the bands of Duke Ellington and Sun Ra, and the fabled music teacher Fess Whatley. But his memories of the development of the city’s culture, the role of African American educational institutions, life under segregation, and the struggle for civil rights give this fine book an epic feel, and show us sides of Birmingham that historians have missed.”
— John Szwed, author of Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World and Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra
Pictured, right: titles from Lady Muleskinner Press. To order, click here. Titles are also available at exclusive Birmingham locations. |
Read Burgin's four-part series exploring intergalactic jazz hero SUN RA's Birmingham years, published in the B'ham newsweekly WELD for Sun Ra's centennial. Part One begins here, with links to the other three installments. |
Read Burgin's tribute to friend, mentor, and creative partner Frank "Doc" Adams, published in November 2014. Doc Adams died on October 29, 2014, at the age of 86. Read the WELD story here. |
Read Burgin's story, for Birmingham Magazine, on Gennett Records' 1927 "Birmingham Sessions." At the end of the article, there's a link to The Lost Child's accompanying radio soundtrack. |
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THE LOST CHILD airs on Birmingham Mountain Radio every Saturday morning from 9 to 10 Central, and is rebroadcast every Tuesday night from 11 to midnight. Stream it at www.bhammountainradio.com, or listen locally at 107.3 FM (Birmingham) and 97.5 (Tuscaloosa). You can also hear us Monday nights, 10 to 11, at www.radiofreenashville.org. Don't forget to like us--and say hello--on Facebook.