The Atlanta Blues Begin

First Sightings, First Recordings 1912-1925

Georgia Tom Dorsey

During the Roaring Twenties, Atlanta, Georgia, was home to a thriving community of bluesmen whose styles were as just distinctive as those of their counterparts in Mississippi, Memphis, and Chicago. Peg Leg Howell and His Gang specialized in countrified juke music set to guitar and violin. Barbecue Bob, who became Columbia Records’ best-selling bluesman, framed his songs with zesty bass runs and rhythmic slide played on a 12-string guitar. His older brother Laughing Charley Lincoln was a less flashy 12-stringer whose dark personality belied the “laughing” shtick on his 78s. Their childhood friend Curley Weaver expertly played 6-string slide guitar as well as the old-time frailing and more recent “Piedmont” styles. Their associate Buddy Moss, a talented harmonica player and guitarist who came to prominence in the 1930s, drew from their sound, as well as what he’d learned from records by Blind Blake and others. Blind Willie McTell, truly in a class of his own, blended ragtime, spirituals, and country blues, emerging as one of the greatest bluesmen of any era.

At the time these men came to prominence, a great flourishing of black music was taking place in Atlanta. Crowds flocked to the glorious Big Bethel A.M.E. Church, built in 1922 on the corner of Butler and Auburn, to hear famous spiritual choirs and the melodious preaching of Rev. J.M. Gates, by far Atlanta’s most recorded figure. The famous 81 Theater on Decatur Street offered the best in Black vaudeville, booking comics and straight men, chorus girls, small bands, and popular recording artists such as Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Mamie Smith, and Lonnie Johnson. As a teenaged usher, Tom Dorsey sold soda pop there while pioneering blues artists such as Ma and Pa Rainey performed onstage. After a distinguished career writing blues songs and making hit records with Tampa Red, “Georgia Tom” Dorsey would become Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey, the beloved Father of Gospel Music and star of the 1982 film Say Amen, Somebody.