With native performers ranging from Johnny Mercer to Little Richard and musical styles ranging from Sacred Harp singing to hip-hop, Georgia boasts a proud popular-music past and a growing future. Many archives, museums, libraries, and historical societies in Georgia preserve the state’s music and make it available to researchers.
Albany Civil Rights Movement Museum
The Albany Civil Rights Movement Museum, located at the historic Old Mt. Zion Church in Albany, features photographs and other materials on the civil rights movement in southwest Georgia, particularly relating to the Freedom Singers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Atlanta History Center
The Atlanta History Center provides a home for the Graham Washington Jackson Papers, as well as for Jackson’s famous accordion, which he played during U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s funeral procession. The center also houses the records of the Georgia Federation of Music Clubs from 1920 to 1949, the Atlanta Music Club Records, and numerous other manuscripts and books related to music.
Auburn Avenue Research Library
The Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History in Atlanta houses books, manuscripts, and jazz, blues, and gospel sound recordings. Other materials document African American entertainment in Atlanta and music halls in the state.
Atlanta University Center
The Robert W. Woodruff Library at the Atlanta University Center houses an array of collections documenting African American music history. Prominent collections include the Maud Cuney Hare Papers, which contains creole music and melodies from the Caribbean, and the Tupac Amaru Shakur Collection, which preserves manuscripts, correspondence, and ephemera belonging to the late rapper Tupac Shakur.
Emory University
The Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University in Atlanta houses a collection of Confederate sheet-music imprints, as well as information on African American music, including the James Weldon Johnson Collection. Johnson graduated from Atlanta University (later Clark Atlanta University) and taught briefly in the city of Hampton. Although better known today as a poet and writer, Johnson wrote the lyrics to more than 200 popular songs with his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and Athens songwriter Bob Cole. Emory’s collection includes correspondence related to Johnson’s compositions, song lyrics, and the sheet music for “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” better known as the Black National Anthem.
Emory’s Marian K. Heilbrun Music and Media Library houses a substantial collection of nearly 40,000 sound recordings and a range of printed materials, including more than 45,000 scores and 30,000 books.
Georgia Historical Society
The Georgia Historical Society (GHS), located in Hodgson Hall in Savannah, holds the papers of historian and folklorist Lydia Parrish, who wrote Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands (1942). The collection captures her ethnomusicology research and documents her advocacy for the preservation of Black spirituals. Additionally, the personal papers and performing arts material of Savannah State University professor and playwright Ja A. Jahannes include various musical scores and audiovisual recordings of musical performances related to Savannah’s Black community. The GHS archives also include Confederate sheet music, materials on Civil War (1861-65) musicians and music education, and manuscripts related to Savannah-area music clubs and performances.
Georgia State University
The Special Collections and Archives Department at Georgia State University (GSU) in Atlanta houses the Johnny Mercer Collection, the largest collection of his personal papers. Mercer was a songwriter from Savannah who wrote the lyrics to some of the most recognizable tunes of the twentieth century, including “Hooray for Hollywood,” “Blues in the Night,” “That Old Black Magic,” and “Moon River,” and the collection includes sound recordings, sheet music, correspondence, lyrics, and personal effects. Also housed at GSU are materials relating to Emma Kelly (dubbed “the Lady of 6,000 Songs” by Mercer) and various oral interviews conducted with Mercer’s friends and family. In addition to the Mercer materials, the university houses collections related to the history of country music and of radio broadcasting in Atlanta, as well as numerous jazz and swing recordings. In 2023 the library launched the Atlanta Hip Hop Archives, which collects material relating to the history of hip hop in Atlanta from 1980 to the present.
Mercer University
The Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives department of Mercer’s University Libraries houses the Capricorn Studios Collection, which includes records, recordings, and ephemera from Macon’s legendary Capricorn Studios. During the 1970s and 1980s Capricorn Records released albums from the likes of Percy Sledge, the Marshall Tucker Band, and the Allman Brothers Band, many of which were recorded at Capricorn Studios.
Okefenokee Heritage Center
Let Us Sing, Sacred Harp in Southeast Georgia is a permanent exhibition at the Okefenokee Heritage Center in Waycross. The exhibition resulted from a collaboration of the center, the South Georgia Folklife Project, and Sacred Harp singers in southeast Georgia. In addition to the items displayed in Waycross, the Folklife Project, housed at Valdosta State University in nearby Valdosta, features materials on bluegrass, African American gospel, Primitive Baptist hymnody, Sacred Harp, and fiddling from the region.
University of Georgia
The Walter J. Brown Media Archives at the University of Georgia in Athens features such broadcast material as the Peabody Awards Collection and the Museum of Television and Radio Collection. Georgia musicians and storytellers are documented in the Georgia Music Hall of Fame Collection, the Allen E. MacLeod Collection and in the Georgia Folklore Collection, which includes more than 1,000 hours of field recordings made by Art Rosenbaum and the Georgia Folklore Society. The Athens Underground Sound Collection consists of audio recordings from Athens’s pop-music heyday, including early recordings by R.E.M., while the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies houses the Athens Music Project Oral History Collection, which includes interviews with figures from the city’s burgeoning music scene.
University of West Georgia
The University of West Georgia in Carrollton is home to a collection of materials on shape-note hymnody and Sacred Harp singing. The area around Carrollton and Bremen is known for the traditional a cappella religious music that emphasizes participation rather than performance. The Sacred Harp Headquarters and Museum can also be found in Carrollton and includes recordings, songbooks, periodicals, scrapbooks, and other materials.
