| ARTIST | SONG | ALBUM |
|---|---|---|
| Blind Willie McTell | Savannah Mama | Postwar Recordings 1949-50 |
| Blind Willie McTell & Curley Weaver | Don't Forget It | Postwar Recordings 1949-50 |
| Curley Weaver | Ticket Agent | Postwar Recordings 1949-50 |
| John Lee Ziegler | Who's Gonna Be Your Man | The George Mitchell Collection Vols. 1-45 |
| Bud Grant | Blues Around My Bed | Georgia Blues |
| Cliff Scott | Long Wavy Hair | Georgia Blues |
| Billy Wright | Stacked Deck | Billy wright 1949-1951 |
| Zilla Mays | Nightshift Blues | Jumpin' The Blues Vol. 3 |
| Danny Boy And His Blue Guitar | Kokomo Me Baby | 45 |
| George Henry Bussey | When I'm Sober, When I'm Drunk Blues | Jim Bunkley & George Henry Bussey |
| Jim Bunkley | Segregation Blues | Jim Bunkley & George Henry Bussey |
| Pinetop Slim | Applejack Boogie | Modern Downhome Blues Sessions Vol. 4 |
| Robert Lee Westmoreland | Good Looking Woman Blues | Play My Juke Box |
| Tommy Lee Russell | Dupree Blues | Blues Come To Chapel Hill |
| Roy Dunn | She Cook Cornbread For Her Husband | Know'd Them All |
| Cecil Barfield | I Told You Not To Do That | The George Mitchell Collection Vols. 1-45 |
| Green Paschal | Trouble Brought Me Down | Georgia Blues |
| Bud White | Go Ahead On | The George Mitchell Collection Vols. 1-45 |
| Neal Patman | Shortnin' Bread | The Art of Field Recording Vol. 2 |
| Eddie Lee Jones And Family | Yonder Go That Old Black Dog | Yonder Go That Old Black Dog |
| Buddy Durham | Blues All Around My Head | Goin' Back To Tifton |
| David Wylie | You're Gonna Weep And Moan | Down Home Blues Classics Vol. 6 |
| Frank Edwards | Gotta Get Together | Sugar Mama |
| Precious Bryant | You Don`t Want Me No More | The Roots Of It All: Acoustic Blues Vol .4 |
| Jessie Clarence Gorman | Goin' Up To The Country #1 | The George Mitchell Collection Vols. 1-45 |
| James Davis | Old Country Rock #1 | The George Mitchell Collection Vols. 1-45 |
| Buddy Moss | Amy | The George Mitchell Collection Vols. 1-45 |
| Willie Guy Rainey | John Henry | Willie Guy Rainey |
| Junior Tamplin | Under The Viaduct (In Atlanta, GA) | Let Me Tell You About The Blues: Atlanta |
| Piano Red | Rockin' With Red | The Real Dr. Feelgood |
| Tommy Brown | Atlanta Boogie | Rockin' On Acorn-Regent Vol. 1 |
| Bruce Upshaw & Willie Rockomo | Tease Me Baby #2 | The George Mitchell Collection Vols. 1-45 |
| Jimmy Lee Williams | Have You Ever Seen Peaches | Hoot Your Belly |
| Cora Mae Bryant | McTell, Moss & Weaver | Born With The Blues |
Show Notes:
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| Read Liner Notes |
As a regional music center, Atlanta was as vital to the early years of recorded blues as was Memphis. Initially, it was just one location regular|y visited by mobile recording units but as the years passed it became increasingly important. Like Memphis, Atlanta was a staging post for musicians on their way to the north but it also supported a thriving musical community of its own. It’s also where in 1924, OKeh technicians recorded one of the first country blues, “Time Ain’t Gonna Make Me Stay”‘ by Ed Andrews. In 1926 Peg Leg Howell was recorded by Columbia, the following year Victor recorded Barbecue Bob and Blind Willie McTell and in 1928 Curley Weaver was recorded by Columbia. WWII put an end to recording in Atlanta for some time and it wasn’t until the end of the decade that a number of country blues artists, including Blind Willie McTell, Curley Weaver, Pinetop Slim, Frank Edwards, David Wylie and Robert Lee Westmoreland, kept their tradition alive. But in the meantime, more modern blues and R&B was rising including singers Billy Wright and his pal Little Richard, as well as Tommy Brown and Piano Red among others. In the 1960’s and 70’s their was notable field recordings made by George Mitchell who found and recorded several fine blues artists like John Lee Ziegler, Jimmy Lee Williams and Cecil Barfield while Pete Lowry recorded Roy Dunn, Frank Edwards and others.
In the immediate post-war years there were some fine down-home Georgia blues artists recorded, most notably two of Atlanta’s finest, Blind Willie McTell and Curley Weaver. McTell was born in Thomson, Georgia, near Augusta, and raised near Statesboro. He was A major figure with a local following in Atlanta from the 1920’s onward, he recorded dozens of sides throughout the 1930’s under a multitude of names — all the better to juggle “exclusive” relationships with many different record labels at once — including Blind Willie, Blind Sammie, Hot Shot Willie, and Georgia Bill, as a backup musician to Ruth Mary Willis. Willie’s recording career began in late 1927 with two sessions for Victor records, eight sides including the immortal “Statesboro Blues.”
Curley Weaver was born in Covington, Georgia,and raised on a farm near Porterdale. His mother, Savannah “Dip” Shepard Weaver, was a well-respected pianist and guitarist, who taught Curley and her friend’s sons, “Barbecue Bob” and Charlie Hicks, He first recorded in 1928, for Columbia Records, and subsequently released records on several different labels. Weaver recorded a session for for Sittin’ in With in late 1949 or early 1950 and Weaver and McTell recorded a session for Regal in 1950. As David Evans wrote: “Weaver’s Sittin’ in With tracks appear to represent the core of his repertoire and show him deeply embedded in the Georgia blues tradition, with a particular debt to McTell. …Contrary to some published reports, McTell and Weaver both play guitars on all of the Regal recordings except two takes of a slow gospel song.” Weaver never record again but McTell also recorded for Atlantic in 1949 and made some final sides in 1956.
Other Georgia artists who record shortly into the post-war were Pinetop Slim, Frank Edwards, David Wylie and Robert Lee Westmoreland. Pinetop Slim was discovered in 1949 by Joe Bihari. He was playing and singing on a street corner in Atlanta. Georgia and Joe took him to a radio station to record.
David Wylie was born in Washington, GA. on July 1, 1926 Nothing else is known about him except the fact that he recorded for titles for Regal Records in Atlanta in the spring of 1950. Two were issued on a 78 at the time, the remaining two didn’t see the light of day until 19 years later when they appeared on the Biograph LP Sugar Mama.
Frank Edwards was born in Washington, Georgia. He recorded for three record labels in his career; Okeh Records in 1941, Regal Records in 1949, and a full-length album for Trix Records in the mid-1970’s. Some more recent sessions were done for the Music Maker Relief Foundation.
Robert Lee Westmoreland left behind just two songs, “Hello Central Give Me 209” and “Good Looking Woman Blues.” These sides were recorded for the Trepur label in La Grange, Georgia in 1953.
In the 1940’s and 50’s several Georgia singers made a name for themselves on the R&B market including Billy Wright, Little Richard, Tommy Brown, Piano Red and others. While Atlanta didn’t boast any recordings studios, sessions were done in the city in makeshift studios, particularly at radio station WGST. A prime influence on Little Richard during his formative years, “Prince of the Blues” Billy Wright’s shouting delivery was an Atlanta staple during the postwar years. Saxist Paul “Hucklebuck” Williams caught Wright’s act when they shared a bill , recommending the teenaged singer to Savoy Records boss Herman Lubinsky. Wright’s 1949 Savoy debut, “Blues for My Baby,” shot up to number three on Billboard’s R&B charts, and its flip, “You Satisfy,” did almost as well. Two more of Wright’s Savoy 78s, “Stacked Deck” and “Hey Little Girl,” were also Top Ten R&B entries in 1951. Wright set his pal Little Richard up with powerful WGST DJ Zenas Sears, who scored him his first contract with RCA in 1951.
William Lee Perryman was born on a farm near Hampton, Georgia in 1911. y the early 1930s, Perryman was playing at house parties, juke joints, and barrelhouses in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. In 1950, after spending the previous 14 years upholstering and playing music on weekends, Perryman recorded “Rockin’ with Red” and “Red’s Boogie” at the WGST radio studios in Atlanta for RCA Victor. Both songs became national hits, reaching numbers five and three respectively on the Billboard R&B charts. During the mid-1950s Perryman also worked as a disc jockey on radio stations WGST and WAOK in Atlanta, broadcasting ‘The Piano Red Show’ (later ‘The Dr. Feelgood Show’) directly from a small 
shack in his back yard. Signed to Okeh Records in 1961, Perryman began using the name Dr. Feelgood and the Interns, releasing several hits, including the much-covered “Doctor Feelgood.”
Born in Lumpkin, Georgia, Tommy Brown formed a small band with himself as the drummer in the 1940s, and worked in clubs around Atlanta. In 1949 he recorded “Atlanta Boogie” on the Regent label. In 1951 he moved on to Dot where he was teamed with the Griffin Brothers and in August of that same year Brown was featured singer on the R&B Top 10 hit “Tra-La-La”, credited to the Griffin Brothers Orchestra, and later in the year the combination reached #1 on the R&B chart with “Weepin’ and Cryin.'” He recorded for United in 1952 and played for a while in Bill Doggett’s band. Brown made a comeback in 2001, recording and performing around the world in blues festivals.
From the early 1960’s to the early 1980’s George Mitchell roamed all over the south recording blues in small rural communities where the music still thrived. Mitchell did record some of the famous artists of the past like Buddy Moss, Furry Lewis, Will Shade, Sleepy Johns Estes and was the first to record artists who would achieve later fame such as R.L. Burnside, Jesse Mae Hemphill, Othar Turner and Precious Bryant. What Mitchell recorded in the rural communities of Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi in the 1960’s was a still thriving, if largely undocumented, blues culture. Several of today’s artists were featured on the 1981 Flyright album, Georgia Blues Today. Mitchell’s wrote that “the bluesmen on this album are the best I located while conducting field research for the Georgia Grassroots Music Festival from 1976 through 1979.” Mitchell was one of the few who documented the Lower Chattahoochee River Valley region which has one of the richest traditions of blues music in America. The region is defined as the eighteen counties that hug the Chattahoochee River along the Georgia/Alabama border, along with three additional counties in Georgia.
Pete Lowry did not go to Mississippi, did not discover long lost bluesmen from the 1920’s but in his voluminous research, writing and recording has charted his own path, becoming the most renowned expert on the blues of the Southeast and is credited with coining the term Piedmont Blues. Between 1969 and 1980 he amassed hundreds of photographs, thousands of recordings, music and interviews in his travels through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. Lowry set up the Trix Records label in 1972 starting with a series of 45’s with LP’s being released by 1973. It lasted about a decade as an active label dealing mainly with Piedmont blues artists from the Southeastern states with seventeen albums. Other recordings were issued on the Flyright label. Bastin. Lowry’s issued recordings are just the tip of the iceberg with unreleased recordings far exceeding what was commercially released. Among the Georgia artists he recorded were Tommy Lee Russell, Frank Edwards and Roy Dun, a fine musician and a major source of information and contacts by researchers into the blues of the east coast states.
A few other tracks worth mentioning are by artists Eddie Lee Jones, Danny Boy And His Blue Guitar, Buddy Durham and Cora Mae Bryant. Eddie Lee “Mustright” Jones was recorded by folklorist Bill Koon after encountering Jones playing guitar on a porch in Lexington, GA, in 1965. resulting in the Testament album, Yonder Go That Old Black Dog. Danny Boy And His Blue Guitar cut one 45 in 1958 for the Tifco label which primarily issued country records. Cora Mae Bryant was the daughter of Georgia guitar legend Curley Weaver and cut a pair of albums for Music Maker. Buddy Durham was recorded by Kip Lornell in the early 70’s in Albany, New York for the album Goin’ Back To Tifton but was originally from Tifton, Georgia.
