Faye Adams

Legendary disc jockey Alan Freed bestowed the nickname “the little gal with the big voice” on Faye Adams, whose early R&B recordings channeled the emotional intensity of gospel and thereby helped lay the foundation for soul. Born Fay Tuell around 1925 in Newark, New Jersey, she was the daughter of gospel singer David Tuell, a central figure in the Church Of God In Christ (COGIC) movement that later produced Billy Preston and Edwin Hawkins. At age five she began performing spirituals with her siblings as the Tuell Sisters on local Newark radio broadcasts.

After her 1942 marriage to Tommy Scruggs, who would later manage her career, Tuell gradually shifted toward secular material and, by the early 1950s, had become a regular performer on the New York City nightclub circuit. While appearing in Atlanta she caught the attention of Ruth Brown, who urged her to reach out to Atlantic Records president Herb Abramson. Tuell returned to New York for an audition and was promptly placed with Joe Morris & His Blues Cavalcade, filling the vacancy left by Laurie Tate’s departure to start a family. She toured with the band and made her first studio appearance on the 1952 novelty single “That’s What Makes My Baby Fat,” which failed to chart.

During a stop in Montgomery, Alabama, the group cut the gospel-flavored “Shake a Hand,” a track Atlantic declined to issue; once Morris’s contract lapsed he moved the act to Herald Records and re-recorded the song plus six additional numbers at Bell Sound studio in New York. Impressed, label head Al Silver awarded Tuell top billing and renamed her Faye Adams. The resulting single, released in August 1953, reached number one on the R&B chart the following month and held the position for eight weeks before being displaced by the similar “I’ll Be True.” The two releases together approached two million copies sold. Although her next outing, “Every Day,” made no impression, she reclaimed the top spot in mid-1954 with “Hurts Me to My Heart.”

Hoping for pop crossover success, Adams nevertheless found her emotive ballads overshadowed by the rise of rock & roll; she left Morris to pursue a solo path, joining the Rhythm & Blues Show tour alongside the Drifters, the Counts, and the Spaniels. In early 1955 she issued her fifth Herald single, “Anything for a Friend,” coinciding with a week-long engagement at the Apollo Theater. “My Greatest Desire” appeared that spring, yet sales continued to decline even as her live appeal remained strong; later 1955 releases “The Angels Tell Me” and “Same Old Me” likewise failed to register. That year she also appeared in the film Rhythm & Blues Revue, which opened in Baltimore in early December. The Freed-penned Teenage Heart reached theaters in 1956, though her next single, “Taking You Back,” did not emerge until late summer. Its follow-up, “The Hammer,” enjoyed regional success across much of the northeast, after which she departed Herald for Imperial and scored a minor R&B hit with “Keeper of My Heart.”

“I Have a Twinkle in My Eye” came next, followed by the little-noticed Lido sides “I Waited So Long” and “That’s All Right” and the Warwick couplings “I’m So Happy” and “Johnny, Don’t Believe Her.” In a final attempt to reach jazz listeners she recorded “Goodnight, My Love” for Prestige in 1962, then permanently abandoned secular music, returning to the gospel circuit and declining thereafter to discuss her earlier R&B work.