Atlanta Country Music Research Guide

Atlanta Country Music

The city of Atlanta played a vital role in the development of the country music industry during the first sixty years of the twentieth century. Beginning in about 1913, the annual fiddlers' conventions at the City Auditorium, then located at the corner of Courtland and Gilmer Streets in downtown Atlanta, drew large crowds of listeners. With the advent of radio in the 1920s country music was disseminated to a wider audience. WSB Radio, which became the major station for country music, featured many important country music shows during the 1930s and 1940s, including the Georgia Jamboree, the Cross Roads Follies, and the ever popular WSB Barn Dance. Atlanta became home to a wide array of country music groups as the city also operated as a major recording center, attracting scouts from record companies in New York in search of talented singers and musicians.

With a few exceptions, most notably the WSB Barn Dance, most of the country music programs on radio in Atlanta ceased by the early 1950s as radio moved from live music to recorded music programming. Some of the performers were able to continue their careers on television during the fifties, on country music programs on WAGA, WLTV, and WSB-TV. By the end of the decade, Atlanta country music had become largely relegated to live music in specialized nightclubs or to recorded music on radio. Many of the musicians themselves turned to bluegrass music or started careers in other fields. Since that time country music enthusiasts from Georgia have been drawn away to Tennessee to pursue their careers, as Nashville has grown to dominate the country music scene.

The Popular Music Collection in the Special Collections Department of Georgia State University contains numerous primary resources relating to country music in Atlanta in the period of its heyday. The following resource guide provides detailed information on these materials.

Papers of Individuals: The Atlanta Country Music Project

The Atlanta Country Music Project was carried out in the mid 1980s by the Popular Music Collection. Several individuals were contacted in an effort to gather the personal papers of musicians who were involved in the Atlanta country music industry. As a result, the Popular Music Collection obtained the personal papers of eighteen Atlanta country musicians. These collections include biographical information, correspondence, news clippings, posters, photographs, sound recordings, sheet music, songbooks, and other materials. In addition, the Popular Music Collection has copies of photographs obtained by Wayne W. Daniel in the preparation of his book Pickin' on Peachtree.

The following table lists the main entry, accession number, and location(s) for each of these collections. You may request any of these collections from a reference archivist in Special Collections. For further information, please consult the finding aids for each collection (online here.)

Country Music Recordings

The Popular Music Collection holds a number of audio recordings of broadcasts from radio stations in the Atlanta area, including WSB, WGST, and WAGA. Among these recordings are several phonodiscs of country music programs, mostly from the 1940s. Featured are groups such as The Swanee River Boys, The Sunshine Boys, and The Happy Two. Patrons of Special Collections may listen to these programs on the audio equipment in the Reading Room. Please refer to the APR numbers as they are listed below. Further information may be obtained from a Special Collections reference archivist.

Popular Music Ephemera Files

Several folders in the Popular Music Ephemera Files pertain to Atlanta country music. You may request any of the following folders:

• Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame

• Blue Sky Boys

• Carrier, Cotton

• Carson, Fiddlin' John

• Carson, James and Martha

• Country Music

• Country Music Hall of Fame (Nashville)

• Eckler, Pop

• Fiddling Conventions

• Gatins, Bill

• Holden Brothers

• Jenkins Family Singers

• Swanee River Boys

• Uncle Ned

Lane Brothers Collection

The Lane Brothers collection of photographs contains numerous images of country musicians at WSB. To view the following images, ask the reference archivist for the boxes indicated below. In Box 121, Corporate Bodies, other envelopes besides those listed below may contain relevant images.

Southern Labor Archives: Labor Non-Print Collection

The Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill Strike Collection (83-38) contains two photographs of the famous country fiddler known as Fiddlin' John Carson. The first of these (83-38/29), dated June 8, 1914, is a group portrait of John Carson and his family inscribed with the caption "Fidling [sic] John and Family." The second (83-38/30), which bears the same date, shows John Carson holding his fiddle and petting a dog outside 59 Carroll Street. The image is inscribed as follows: "'Fidling' John about to be evicted. Russell."

Popular Music Periodicals

The Popular Music Collection holds copies of The SEBA Breakdown, the official newsletter of the Southeastern Bluegrass Association, from the winter 1984 issue to the present. Popular Music also has copies of the Atlanta Area Friends of Folk Music Newsletter from October 1992 to the present.

Selected Bibliography

Daniel, Wayne W. Pickin' On Peachtree. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

Wiggins, Gene. Fiddlin' Georgia Crazy: Fiddlin' John Carson, His Real World, and the World of His Songs. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987.