The New Georgia Encyclopedia is supported by funding from A More Perfect Union, a special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Musician Joe South created the country soul genre in the 1960s. His songs were performed by major country and rock-and-roll singers and groups in the 1960s and 1970s.
Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries, Georgia Music Hall of Fame Collection.
Songwriter and musician Joe South won two Grammy Awards for his hit song "Games People Play" in 1969. While working as a studio musician in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and Nashville, Tennessee, South also played on recordings by such legendary performers as Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Marty Robbins, and Simon and Garfunkel.
Image from Capitol Records
Chuck Leavell stands among the longleaf pines on Charlane Plantation, his timber farm and hunting preserve in Twiggs County. Leavell and his wife, Rose, have received state and national awards recognizing their efforts in conservation.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Pianist Chuck Leavell, a resident of Twiggs County since the early 1980s, has played with such notable acts as the Allman Brothers Band and the Rolling Stones. Inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2004, Leavell has also released several solo albums.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Duane Allman was the guitarist for the Allman Brothers Band, which he formed with his younger brother, Gregg, in 1969. The band released its first album on Capricorn Records, a label based in Macon. Allman died in 1971 after being injured in a motorcycle accident.
Gram Parsons's work on the album Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968) earned critical success and increased popularity for the Byrds, but it turned out to be the only album Parsons would record with the band.
Gram Parsons's influence on other musicians stems from his innovative fusion of the country and rock genres. Though he died young in the early 1970s, Parsons left behind a body of work that continues to earn the admiration of contemporary musicians.
Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries, Georgia Music Hall of Fame Collection.
Vocalist Emmylou Harris recorded two albums with Gram Parsons: GP (1973) and Grievous Angel (1974). Between the releases of these two records, Harris toured with Parsons's Fallen Angels band.
Photograph copyright Geoff Gibbs
The Allman Brothers Band formed in Florida in 1969 and moved to Macon later that same year.
Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries, Georgia Music Hall of Fame Collection.
The Allman Brothers Band recorded its first album in New York in August 1969, just five months after the band debuted in Jacksonville, Florida.
Little Richard's debut album, Here's Little Richard, was released in 1957 by Specialty Records.
Photography by Jay Miller
Little Richard Penniman, known as "the Georgia Peach," claimed to be "the innovator and the architect of rock and roll." From 1956 to 1957 he recorded a string of hits before renouncing show business to enter the seminary. He returned to the stage in 1962 and continued to perform into his seventies. In 1986 Little Richard was one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Image from Wikimedia
The B-52's (clockwise from top left: Keith Strickland, Kate Pierson, Fred Schneider, and Cindy Wilson) formed in the late 1970s and remain one of Athens's best-known bands.
Image from A. Currell
The B-52's (from left: Fred Schneider, Keith Strickland, Kate Pierson, Ricky Wilson, and Cindy Wilson) became a commercial and critical success with their first album, The B-52's (1979), mostly on the strength of their dance party classics "Rock Lobster" and "52 Girls." Ricky Wilson, lead guitarist and the member responsible for much of the band's unique vision, died of AIDS in 1985.
Image from A. Currell
With its fusion of southern rock, jazz, and blues, Widespread Panic has earned renown as one of America's best live bands.
Image from Wikimedia
Widespread Panic released their first-ever live album, Light Fuse, Get Away (1998), for which they held a free, open-air release party in downtown Athens in April 1998. The massive event once held the world record for the largest album release party at an estimated 100,000 attendees.
Courtesy of UGA Press
Formed in Athens in 1980, R.E.M. (left to right: Mike Mills, Michael Stipe, and Peter Buck) has become one of the most critically honored rock bands in America.
Photograph by youngrobv
The cover art for Reckoning (1984), the second album by rock group R.E.M, features a painting by folk artist Howard Finster.
Photograph by Bradley Loos
The rock band R.E.M. (left to right: Peter Buck, Bill Berry, Michael Stipe, Mike Mills) was formed in Athens in 1980. The group was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
Vic Chesnutt performs in 2008 at the 40 Watt Club in Athens.
Courtesy of Mike White | DEADLYDESIGNS.COM
Vic Chesnutt, an influential folk-rock musician, spent much of his career in Athens. His first album, Little, was released in 1995 with the assistance of R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, and many of his subsequent albums were made in collaboration with Athens musicians.
Image from [carlo cravero]
Vic Chesnutt, an acclaimed Athens-based musician, produced more than twenty albums over the course of his career. Chesnutt used a wheelchair after being partially paralyzed in a 1983 car accident, when he was eighteen years old.
Image from Todd Kulesza
In 1972 a group of Atlanta-area studio musicians formed the Atlanta Rhythm Section. The band (pictured are vocalist Ronnie Hammond, who joined the band in 1973; guitarist J. R. Cobb; guitarist Barry Bailey; bassist Paul Goddard; keyboardist Dean Daughtry; and drummer Robert Nix) provided a different twist to the growing phenomenon of southern rock.
J.R. Cobb, Ronnie Hammond, Barry Bailey, Paul Goddard, Robert Nix, and Dean Daughtry, pictured here in 1977, were working studio musicians when songwriter and music producer Buddy Buie brought them together to form the Atlanta Rhythm Section. The ARS distinguished themselves among southern rock groups of their time by eschewing lengthy guitar solos in favor of more tightly choreographed tracks.
Image from Wikimedia
