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 Texas and 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 …

Columbia Records came to Atlanta in November 1926 and recorded a variety of spiritual acts and blues guitarist Peg Leg Howell. Born in 1888 in Eatonton, Georgia, Joshua Barnes Howell was a generation older than most of the prewar Atlanta bluesmen. Like Lead Belly and old Henry Thomas in Texas, his repertoire extended to country reels, field hollers, ballads, and other pre-blues styles. He attended school through ninth grade and learned how to play guitar in 1909. In an interview with George Mitchell, the researcher who rediscovered him in 1963, …

While Peg Leg Howell and His Gang tended to sound countrified, Barbecue Bob, his brother Laughing Charley, and Curley Weaver pushed Atlanta blues in new directions. The three had grown up together in the cottonfield country around Walnut Grove, Georgia. Charlie Hicks, often identified as “Laughing Charley” on records, was born in 1900. His brother Robert was 18 months his junior. They were sons of sharecroppers, as was their neighbor Curley James Weaver, four years younger than Robert. Curley’s mother, Savannah “Dip” Weaver, played guitar and piano in church. Old …

Curley Weaver was one of Atlanta’s most beloved bluesmen and, for decades, Blind Willie McTell’s close friend. He was an exceptionally skilled guitar soloist, with a slide and without, and recorded many records on his own and as a sideman to Blind Willie McTell, Fred McMullen, Buddy Moss, Ruth Willis, and others.  He was also an essential part of two of the best string bands of prewar blues, the Georgia Cotton Pickers and Georgia Browns.
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Born on March 25, 1906, Curley James Weaver was raised around Walnut Grove, Georgia. He was childhood friends with …

A talented harmonica player in his teens, Buddy Moss took up 6-string guitar after he moved to Atlanta in 1928 and began associating with Barbecue Bob, Charley Lincoln, and Curley Weaver. He advanced quickly on the instrument and within a few years was one of the Southeast’s foremost blues performers. By the mid 1930s, his output of 78s rivaled that of Blind Willie McTell, with whom he occasionally performed. But his time in the spotlight would be short-lived.
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Eugene “Buddy” Moss hailed from Jewell, Georgia, where he was born on January …

Among Atlanta’s early bluesmen, no one surpassed Blind Willie McTell, who had it all – a shrewd mind, insightful lyrics, astounding nimbleness on a 12-string guitar, and a sweet, plangent, and slightly nasal voice. Sensitive, confident, and hip-talking, he was a beloved figure in the various communities in which he traveled. He played sublimely, a result of both natural talent and from performing hours a day for people from all walks of life. McTell’s records reveal a phenomenal repertoire of blues, ragtime, hillbilly music, spirituals, ballads, show tunes, and original songs. …

During the mid 1920s, strong sales of 78s by Papa Charlie Jackson and Blind Lemon Jefferson led Paramount Records to sign Blind Blake, a swinging, sophisticated guitarist whose warm, relaxed voice was a far cry from harsh country blues. Some of Blake’s 78s cast him as a jivey hipster sitting in with jazzmen, while on others he walked the long, lonely road to the gallows. The man with the “famous piano-sounding guitar” is still regarded as the unrivaled master of ragtime blues fingerpicking.
“Lord have mercy, was he sophisticated!” says Jorma …