Alberta Adams is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 Detroit blues

Detroit blues

Detroit blues is blues music played by musicians resident in Detroit, Michigan, particularly that played in the 1940s and 1950s. Detroit blues originated when Delta blues performers migrated north from the Mississippi Delta and Memphis, Tennessee to work in Detroit's industrial plants in the 1920s...

, jump blues

Jump blues

Jump blues is an up-tempo blues usually played by small groups and featuring horns. It was very popular in the 1940s, and the movement was a precursor to the arrival of rhythm and blues and rock and roll...

, and Chicago blues

Chicago blues

The Chicago blues is a form of blues music that developed in Chicago, Illinois, by taking the basic acoustic guitar and harmonica-based Delta blues, making the harmonica louder with a microphone and an instrument amplifier, and adding electrically amplified guitar, amplified bass guitar, drums,...

 singer. Adams was raised in Detroit

Detroit, Michigan

Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...

, Michigan

Michigan

Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

 by a relative, and began performing as a tap dance

Tap dance

Tap dance is a form of dance characterized by using the sound of one's tap shoes hitting the floor as a percussive instrument. As such, it is also commonly considered to be a form of music. Two major variations on tap dance exist: rhythm tap and Broadway tap. Broadway tap focuses more on the...

r in the 1930s. In 1942, she appeared at the B&C club

Nightclub

A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...

, amidst other artists such as John Lee Hooker

John Lee Hooker

John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark...

.

In 1952, she landed a recording contract

Recording contract

A recording contract is a legal agreement between a record label and a recording artist , where the artist makes a record for the label to sell and promote...

 with Chess Records

Chess Records

Chess Records was an American record label based in Chicago, Illinois. It specialized in blues, R&B, soul, gospel music, early rock and roll, and occasional jazz releases....

 and recorded alongside Red Saunders

Red Saunders (musician)

Theodore Dudley "Red" Saunders was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He also played vibraphone and timpani....

 for the record label

Record label

In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

. Adams toured alongside Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...

, Eddie Vinson

Eddie Vinson

Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson was an American jump blues, jazz, bebop and R&B alto saxophonist and blues shouter. He was nicknamed Cleanhead after an incident in which his hair was accidentally destroyed by lye contained in a hair straightening product.-Biography:Vinson was born in Houston, Texas...

, Louis Jordan

Louis Jordan

Louis Thomas Jordan was a pioneering American jazz, blues and rhythm & blues musician, songwriter and bandleader who enjoyed his greatest popularity from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "The King of the Jukebox", Jordan was highly popular with both black and white audiences in the...

, Lionel Hampton

Lionel Hampton

Lionel Leo Hampton was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, bandleader and actor. Like Red Norvo, he was one of the first jazz vibraphone players. Hampton ranks among the great names in jazz history, having worked with a who's who of jazz musicians, from Benny Goodman and Buddy...

, and T-Bone Walker

T-Bone Walker

Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker was a critically acclaimed American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who was one of the most influential pioneers and innovators of the jump blues and electric blues sound. He is the first musician recorded playing blues with the...

 amongst others. Her solo career saw her secure a recording contract

Recording contract

A recording contract is a legal agreement between a record label and a recording artist , where the artist makes a record for the label to sell and promote...

 with the now defunct Cannonball Records, and she recorded two albums for them: 1999's Born With the Blues and 2000's Say Baby Say. Her 2004 album, I'm on the Move, was released on the Eastlawn Records

Eastlawn Records

Eastlawn Records is an independent record label producing Blues and Jazz recordings based in Detroit, Michigan USA. The label was co-founed in 1990 by RJ Spangler and Frank Traum. Major artists include Alberta Adams, Planet D Nonet, RJ Spangler's Blue Four....

 label.

At age 91, Adams returned to the studio and recorded Detroit Is My Home. Ann Rabson

Ann Rabson

Ann Rabson is an American blues vocalist, pianist and guitar player. She is a solo recording artist signed to Alligator Records and was a member of Saffire - The Uppity Blues Women, an acoustic blues band that disbanded amicably in 2009.Rabson has been playing and singing the blues professionally...

, Cee Cee Collins and Thornetta Davis

Thornetta Davis

Thornetta Davis is an American Detroit blues and rhythm and blues singer. She has opened for Bonnie Raitt, Gladys Knight, and Etta James, and sang backing vocals on Bob Seger's 1991 album, The Fire Inside...

guested on various tracks.