Her single "I'm Gonna Play the Honky Tonks" coupled with "My Search Is Over", with the writing of both songs credited to Robey, reached number 3 on the Billboard R&B chart in mid-1952, becoming the most successful record on Peacock at that point.

After Johnny Ace's death, she recorded the tribute song, "In Memory", which was regularly played by radio DJ Alan Freed but failed to chart.

[2] She toured with Johnny Otis through much of the 1950s, and became a popular live performer, being known as "TV Mama" in recognition of her "wide screen" girth.

[5] As a mainstay of the Johnny Otis Revue, she recruited sisters Sadie and Francine McKinley to form The Three Tons of Joy, considered "an appropriate name as the three women weighed around 800 pounds together.

(covered in Britain by Emile Ford and the Checkmates) were less commercially successful, and in early 1960 Adams and the Three Tons of Joy left the Johnny Otis Show.