I asked my good friend Bill Brown to write an article for the Georgia Bluegrass News that outlined a concept that he and Mike Fleming worked to bring together to what we now know as The North Georgia Bluegrass Chronicles. This is particularly important to me as the North Georgia Bluegrass Chronicles is the basis of what we are trying to build and continue here with The Georgia Bluegrass Heritage Project. I am grateful they provided the article below that we are privileged to share with each of you. Thanks to Bill & Mike for all your efforts!
“A Backstory
Intro
When Jeff asked me to provide a backstory for the North Georgia Bluegrass Chronicles, I thought this would be rather simple and that I could complete in a couple of hours. As it turned out, that couple of hours turned into a couple of months and was a much more formidable task than I had first assumed. Please understand that this undertaking was completed in components, and, therefore, is not necessarily a smooth running narrative.
At any rate, here goes. When I think of the North Georgia Bluegrass Chronicles the word that always comes to mind is “intentional.” Every section, each interview, scanned photo, presentation, article, any featured event, yes, in other words every component was designed to highlight and honor the vibrant North Georgia bluegrass community of the turn of the millennium.
Motivation
I am a long time fan of bluegrass and traditional country music. I grew up approximately sixty five miles southeast of Nashville and old time and country music was an important part of my growing up years. The first music I remember was my visiting uncle playing a fiddle constructed by my father using a pocket knife.
My first personal musical experience was taking piano lessons for five years in elementary school. While I was not motivated to go further with piano, the technical component would later provide a solid base for first the electric bass and then the five string banjo. My first performing experience was as an electric bass player for a semi professional gospel group while teaching science in Manchester, TN. The singers were really good and also very forgiving as I learned and became more comfortable playing in front of large audiences.
Skip forward a few years to the late seventies when I became a part of a thriving bluegrass scene in Knoxville, TN while attending grad school at UTK. I had always had an interest in both bluegrass and frailing, or clawhammer banjo and had become somewhat proficient in both styles, however, I preferred to remain in the background and get to know many of those great performers – several of whom are friends to this day.
In 1979, I graduated grad school at UTK and moved to Marietta, GA where I had accepted a position teaching high school science with Fulton County schools. I started attending bluegrass events and gradually got to know many of the performers and attendees of the thriving weekly bluegrass festivals. As I traveled around North Georgia and its many bluegrass events, I often heard “Somebody ought to document this music (with its rich tradition and direct historical ties to a storied old time and country AND bluegrass tradition).” I certainly was of the same persuasion and always had a cassette recorder and Canon AE1 programmable 35 mm film camera with me as did many other enthusiasts.
Beginnings/Planning of North Georgia Bluegrass Pioneers
In 1987, life changes led to my moving back to Knoxville where I served as adjunct faculty at UTK and was lucky to have opportunities to get back into research and technology including computer programming as a hobby. In 1990, I moved to Lindsey Wilson College (LWC) in south central Kentucky while maintaining my ties with UTK and also took on roles with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) as a science education consultant and director for educator programs sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC).
My ORNL duties had emerging World Wide Web programs (UNIX) available and internet access providing experience with platforms in hand coding web sites (HTML). My LWC teaching duties also had lots of computer based applications and I soon switched from my trusty Canon to Olympus and Sony digital cameras. One day I noticed a student had brought a digital mini disk recorder to class and I immediately recognized this was the missing piece of the puzzle that had been fermenting within for quite some time. I knew I could then do high quality voice recordings, pair these with scanned film photos and digital camera photos, hand code a web site, upload to the web and everyone would have access to this wonderful bluegrass scene in North GA.
Bill Brown
My first endeavor was to simply take 35 mm photos at a festival, scan those photos using a scanner linked to a desktop computer, and then use that computer to hand code the web page and upload to a free website. It was somewhat crude and simplistic, but it worked and provided the basis for later enhancement and sophistication leading to the North Georgia Bluegrass Chronicles.
Implementation
At LWC I had a couple of colleagues who were interested in folk/old time/country music and we formed a trio that played around the area and particularly at a local coffee house. I soon had honed my skills a bit with digital recording, digital photos and hand coding in html. I was also using an early HP laptop (affectionally known as a ‘lug along’) and combining that with a relatively small scanner, I knew I could do interviews, scan photos, and record conversations and music, then hand code (later use html editors) and load to a web site I had purchased containing my domain and have a workable process.
It was at this time that I approached my good friend Mike Fleming about getting the process in place. Mike and I had gotten to know each other well through our mutual interest in the North Georgia Bluegrass Music Scene and had found we had other common interests and backgrounds. For instance, we both had an interest in cultural history and means of preserving. Mike was also a highly respected leader of the bluegrass group, Brush Fire, and had developed strong relationships with other performers, promoters, and industry trades people through his longtime work in leading a band as well as being active in leadership roles including the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) and the Southeastern Bluegrass Music Association (SEBA). He was a natural partner for this labor of love. I would provide the technical legwork and Mike provided a rich, sophisticated background knowledge of the music and the individuals who would be key to obtaining information we sought to preserve. While many interviewees may not have known me well, if Mike viewed an interview with me as having value, they seemed to have no problem with moving forward.
Mike Fleming
Organization
It was at this time that the organization for the website began to fall into place. “Intentional” seemed to be the emphasis guiding our movement forward. There would be several key components. First would be the North Georgia Bluegrass Pioneers. We wanted to interview as many as possible while at the same time understanding our limitations. Mike was employed by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole as well as leading a popular regional bluegrass band. I was employed at a small liberal arts college in south central Kentucky and as a result travel was time consuming. The process of, in the beginning, shooting film photos and then getting film developed, scanning and editing photos, hand coding the web pages, and then uploading to the website was not only time consuming but involved considerable expense. But for Mike and myself this was a labor of love and well worth the time and expense.
We had to make decisions then as for who to interview given our limitations. Luckily for us, Mike was able to touch base with several of his good friends who had greatly influenced the development of the thriving music scene in North Georgia.
In addition, we felt it was very important to highlight influential festivals that were thriving around the turning of the millennium. In so doing, we would also document promoters, bands, performers, and vendors active during this time period.
Another component that both Mike and I felt strongly about was using the oral history we were gathering to produce articles for publications and presentations for professional conferences. To us, there was the need to highlight the importance of key members and give recognition where it was so richly due. This emphasis resulted in articles authored by Mike for publications such as Bluegrass Unlimited and the Southeastern Bluegrass Music Association’s Breakdown. Professional presentations included several at the International Country Music Conference (ICMC) at Belmont University in Nashville and the first Bluegrass Music Symposium at Western Kentucky University.
One challenge that we faced early on related to organizing and documenting photos. The method we decided on was to scan photos and then record a conversation whereby interviewees supplied information as to date, location, people in photos, and any other information they might wish to share such as interesting anecdotes. The last component of the photo gathering involved saving each photo using a code involving year of photo, name of interviewee, and a number in a series of photos shared by each interviewee. When these were uploaded to a folder on the website, the html coding would then arrange the photos in chronological order. Of course, one could also see who contributed the photo, and the order in that interviewee’s series. If one wished more information on the photo, he or she could go to the interviewee’s page and listen to info given by the person themselves in their own words.
Of course, there were individual events of interest that we felt need to be covered as well to document the scene around the year 2000. These included the Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame and the Southeastern Bluegrass Music Association Reunions.
We both felt it was important for the interviewees to be able to share their view of the history without filters or outside interpretation. We wanted to capture photos with recorded history in proper time frame and in chronological order. In addition, we felt it was important that there be a record of interviewees describing scanned photos as to not only individuals, locations, time frame, etc. for each photo, but also opportunities for interviewees to share personal anecdotes or provide additional information they felt to be of importance.
I will not go into detail on each interview. Interviewees recount their own experiences in person on line. I will just say that the first Interviewee was Murray Freeman, followed by J.N. and Onie Baxter, James Watson, Donnie Lee, Mike Fleming, Walter Butler, (daughter Dale Talton), Robert A. “Tut” Taylor, Curtiss Blackwell, and Joel and Earleen Aderhold. Of course there were many other interviewees worthy of being included in this oral history but given this was a labor of love, financial, time, and distance/travel constraints limited what was doable to both Mike and myself.
As an aside, one last point about the collection is that with each interview it seemed there was always a hidden gem. Examples include Walter Butler and the Sun Valley Boys’ performance at the Dixie Jubilee and Curtiss Blackwell as a teenager performing on the Grand Ole Opry.
Future
I am delighted that Jeff sees fit to share the North Georgia Bluegrass Chronicles on his professionally produced website and provide links through social media platforms. It is my wish that the bluegrass scene and the folks highlighted on the site along with the wonderful cultural tradition they have passed down not be forgotten and their contributions be held up for future generations as is so richly deserved. As said in the beginning, the site was designed and implemented with “intention.” Looking at this site twenty five years in retrospect, the hope is that, while primitive by today’s technology standards, it still has relevance and historical significance because of the underpinning of intentionality – to highlight a thriving bluegrass community and its citizens at the turn of the millennium.
The last point I will also make is that this site with all information, including photos, was produced strictly as a labor of love by Mike and myself. We were very observant of permissions, copyright expectations of the time, including “fair use”, and other expectations that may be different from today. This site was produced to be used. Our only expectation is that when material gathered from this site is used is that the source be cited. Several authors of research, articles, and books have followed this procedure and it is most appreciated. Seeing photos from the site showing up on present day social media pages to get “clicks” without citing the source is always disappointing and not within the spirit of the production of the North Georgia Bluegrass Chronicles.
Again, my thanks go to Jeff for providing the opportunity to reminisce a bit about this wonderful experience for me. I really hope it encourages others to pick up the mantle of oral history and move forward with our wonderful story.”
Thanks to Bill and Mike for everything they have done and continue to do to support Bluegrass Music in Georgia. Please take the time to visit the The North Georgia Bluegrass Chronicles website.
