Richard Garrett, co-owner of Dot-2-Dot Inn and recently elected as Putnam County’s District 2 Commissioner, presented “Forgotten Music of Georgia and Beyond” Sunday afternoon at The Plaza Arts Center in downtown Eatonton.
Garrett’s presentation was the latest in a series of history-based talks presented by the Old School History Museum (OSHM), a free exhibit open daily at The Plaza.
OSHM Director Sandra Rosseter introduced Garrett, who has been collecting 78 RPM records featuring popular and traditional music from around the world for more than 30 years. His collection includes several rare recordings from the 1910s through the 1960s.
Garrett opened by explaining that in the early 20th century, up to the 1930s, there existed “an overlap between the richness and diversity of cultures and music all over the world and the rise of technology that could preserve them and capture them.”
He said those two factors briefly overlapped to capture music that is rarely performed or even remembered now. Garrett pointed out, however, that ironically, the technology also led to the demise of much of that music because people no longer had to make their own music at home.
“They could listen to the radio, they could listen to records, and they could hear music from far and wide. In some ways, this broadened people’s horizons, but it also narrowed their horizons,” Garrett pointed out. “So, I love this period of time because it captures sounds that often we don’t hear anymore. Hence the title, ‘Forgotten Music of Georgia and Beyond.’”
Garrett discussed historical context, presented vintage photographs, and told interesting stories during his presentation that focused on five records, from Eatonton’s own “Peg Leg” Howell to the Heavenly Gospel Singers, a quartet out of Spartanburg, S.C., to Trinidad’s Lord Invader.
Also discussed was Deacon’s Calf, recorded in the 1920s by the Georgia Yellow Hammers from Gordon County, and the music of Lydia Mendoza, who was part of the early Mexican American music scene.
“In a period of segregation between Blacks and whites in the South, they are one of the very, very few examples of a white group who made a recording session with Black artists,” Garrett said of the Yellow Hammers. “In 1927, they recorded with father and son Andrew and Jim Baxter, who were also from Gordon County. They co-recorded a track called G Rag, which, again, in the 1920s, an integrated music session was highly unusual.”
He ended his lecture by discussing “Peg Leg,” the inspiration for the annual Peg Leg Howell BBQ and Blues Festival, which has been held since 2022 at City Center Stage in Eatonton.
“It catches that interplay between almost what some people have called a field holler, a very simple refrain repeated over and over,” Garrett said before playing Howell’s “Please Ma’am” for his rapt audience. “But also, it moves into what we would think of as the blues structure at this period of time.”
Guests were not only impressed by Garrett’s knowledge of forgotten music but also deeply appreciative of the opportunity he gave them to hear song snippets and tracks they probably would not have heard otherwise.
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