From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Sun Jun 1, 2003  2:05 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Justin Adams
 
JUSTIN ADAMS

Born 1 June 1923, New Orleans, Louisiana
Died 2 July 1991, New Orleans, Louisiana

Session guitarist.

Justin Adams was a member of Cosimo Matassa's famous Studio
Band, which plays on countless R&B and R&R recordings from
the fifties and early sixties.

The core of the Studio Band were members of Dave Bartholomew's
Band, but there were also a few who had nothing to with Dave's
band : Edgar Blanchard, Roy Montrell, Lee Allen and also Justin
Adams. Justin was a competent and reliable session man, but he
was not seen as the top guitarist in New Orleans. Red Tyler had
this to say to John Broven (author of the book "Walking To New 
Orleans", titled "Rhythm and Blues In New Orleans" in the US):
"I'm gonna give you a line of the guitar players in this city. Now
Ernest McLean was far above everybody, by far the best musician
in Dave Bartholomew's band. Edgar Blanchard was considered a
little better than Justin, I say better from the standpoint of tackling
more intricate things. Then there was Walter "Papoose" Nelson.
He wasn't what I would say in the same category even of Justin
Adams. You put music in front of him and it didn't mean anything 
to him, really. But if you played the thing for him and say 'Listen to
the way it goes', he'd probably play as good a part as anybody else".
Tyler does not mention Roy Montrell.

Going through sessionographies of Fats Domino and Little Richard,
I was surprised on how few sessions Adams played. Bartholomew
preferred to work with Walter Nelson, it seems, and later (from "Be
My Guest" onwards) with Roy Montrell on Fats's records. In fact, the
name of Justin Adams appears only once in the Bear Family disco-
graphy of Fats : he played on the session of May 25, 1956, which
produced "When My Dreamboat Comes Home", the great "Ida Jane" 
and "Don't Know What's Wrong" Also, Adams played on the first
(two-day) Specialty session of Little Richard in September 1955,
which culminated in "Tutti Frutti". 

The Smiley Lewis sessionography doesn't have too many entries
for Adams either (mostly these are speculation : "possibly Justin
Adams"). So it is possible that Dave Bartholomew wasn't too
impressed with him and that he doesn't play on many Imperial
recording as a consequence. Adams does play on many, if not
most of the recordings for Johnny Vincent's Ace label, though.
He died of a heart attack on the age of 68.