Virgin Islands
Alton A. Adams
Browse 1 Sheet
Sort:
Song library
Browse piano sheets by Alton A. Adams on Zen Virtual Piano. Alton Augustus Adams was born in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, then part of the Danish West Indies, on 4 November 1889. After elementary school he was apprenticed, first to become a carpenter and then a shoemaker. In those years he kept up a passion for music, learned the piccolo and flute, and joined the St. Thomas Municipal Band in 1906. Simultaneously he studied music theory and composition late into the night through correspondence courses with Dr. Hugh A. Clark at the University of Pennsylvania. Composition studied by post with a University of Pennsylvania teacher can be read as a lesson that came to the island rather than the island going to the lesson, while music-making carried on. The American Bandmasters Association says he came to depend on music magazines from the U.S. mainland, and that his passion for reading and writing bore fruit in 1910 when he first contributed a piece on the Black composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor to The Dominant. He left the municipal band to form his own ensemble, the Adams Juvenile Band, which became part of the social fabric of Charlotte Amalie, playing for social and charitable events, and as his band gained attention, leading musicians including John Philip Sousa became interested in him. A band that played for social and charitable events in Charlotte Amalie and drew leading musicians can be read as serving two kinds of audience. On 2 June 1917 Adams and his entire Juvenile Band were enlisted into the U.S. Navy, which the U.S. Navy Memorial’s Navy Log says made him the first black bandmaster in the Navy and saw the first African Americans to receive official Navy musical appointments. He first travelled to the U.S. mainland in 1922 to research music education programs, and he counted a 1924 U.S. eastern seaboard tour among the highpoints of his naval career, one that brought him and his Navy band praise from concert and radio listeners in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York and Boston. A whole band joining the Navy together, and then touring the eastern seaboard to applause, might be counted as a milestone for the musicians as much as for their leader, and as a sign of how far an island band had come. He retired into the Naval Fleet Reserve in 1933 and went back to St. Thomas, where he resumed his duties for the public-school music program; he was recalled to active duty with World War II and sent to Guantanamo Bay, where he took charge of an all-white unit and was given permission to bring back eight former bandsmen, forming the first racially integrated band the U.S. Navy sanctioned. Back in St. Thomas he was appointed to the governing committee of the St. Thomas Power Authority, and in 1947 opened his home as the Adams 1799 Guest House, which he operated until about 1983. A bandmaster who later served on a power authority and ran a guest house suggests a man whose civic commitments reached well beyond the music stand.
Browse piano sheets by Alton A. Adams on Zen Virtual Piano.
Alton Augustus Adams was born in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, then part of the Danish West Indies, on 4 November 1889. After elementary school he was apprenticed, first to become a carpenter and then a shoemaker. In those years he kept up a passion for music, learned the piccolo and flute, and joined the St. Thomas Municipal Band in 1906. Simultaneously he studied music theory and composition late into the night through correspondence courses with Dr. Hugh A. Clark at the University of Pennsylvania. Composition studied by post with a University of Pennsylvania teacher can be read as a lesson that came to the island rather than the island going to the lesson, while music-making carried on.
The American Bandmasters Association says he came to depend on music magazines from the U.S. mainland, and that his passion for reading and writing bore fruit in 1910 when he first contributed a piece on the Black composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor to The Dominant. He left the municipal band to form his own ensemble, the Adams Juvenile Band, which became part of the social fabric of Charlotte Amalie, playing for social and charitable events, and as his band gained attention, leading musicians including John Philip Sousa became interested in him. A band that played for social and charitable events in Charlotte Amalie and drew leading musicians can be read as serving two kinds of audience.
On 2 June 1917 Adams and his entire Juvenile Band were enlisted into the U.S. Navy, which the U.S. Navy Memorial’s Navy Log says made him the first black bandmaster in the Navy and saw the first African Americans to receive official Navy musical appointments. He first travelled to the U.S. mainland in 1922 to research music education programs, and he counted a 1924 U.S. eastern seaboard tour among the highpoints of his naval career, one that brought him and his Navy band praise from concert and radio listeners in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York and Boston. A whole band joining the Navy together, and then touring the eastern seaboard to applause, might be counted as a milestone for the musicians as much as for their leader, and as a sign of how far an island band had come.
He retired into the Naval Fleet Reserve in 1933 and went back to St. Thomas, where he resumed his duties for the public-school music program; he was recalled to active duty with World War II and sent to Guantanamo Bay, where he took charge of an all-white unit and was given permission to bring back eight former bandsmen, forming the first racially integrated band the U.S. Navy sanctioned. Back in St. Thomas he was appointed to the governing committee of the St. Thomas Power Authority, and in 1947 opened his home as the Adams 1799 Guest House, which he operated until about 1983. A bandmaster who later served on a power authority and ran a guest house suggests a man whose civic commitments reached well beyond the music stand.
Search the library
Alton A. Adams
Common questions
Alton Augustus Adams, born in 1889 in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, was a bandmaster who founded the Adams Juvenile Band and is remembered as the first black bandmaster in the U.S. Navy.
It was the ensemble he formed after leaving the St. Thomas Municipal Band, and on 2 June 1917 the entire band was enlisted into the U.S. Navy.
He was recalled to active duty, sent to Guantanamo Bay and created the first racially integrated band sanctioned by the U.S. Navy.
He served on the governing committee of the St. Thomas Power Authority and opened the Adams 1799 Guest House in 1947.