One of Georgia’s best-known sons, Ray Charles, famously sang “Hit the Road Jack” — and I needed no further encouragement to follow his advice and set off on the music trail, discovering the state’s rich musical history.
Along the way, I discovered there’s Jewish heritage to be found among the blues and soul legends, starting in Savannah, where the state was founded.
The idea was for it to act as a buffer between the rich colony of Virginia to the north and the Spanish colony of Florida, and in 1733 British soldier James Oglethorpe named the state after his patron George II. He laid his city out in a grid pattern, arranged around 25 squares, 22 of which still survive.
Just five months after the colony was established, 41 mainly Sephardi immigrants arrived after a difficult journey from London. Congregation Mickve Israel, is one of the oldest in the United States and the current synagogue, located on Monterey Square, was consecrated in 1878.
It’s the only purely Gothic Revival synagogue in the United States and contains a museum with 500-year-old Torah scrolls and letters from presidents Washington, Jefferson, and Madison.
Escaping damage in the Civil War, most of Savannah’s historic mansions — built by plantation owners — have survived.
Cobbled streets by the river are crammed with bars and restaurants and a paddleboat ride gives you an idea of what those early settlers must have felt when they arrived. Songwriter Johnny Mercer hailed from here and it’s easy to see where he got the inspiration for his famous song Moon River.
But it was time for me to hit the road and set out north and west to Atlanta — on the way paying homage to Blind Willie McTell, the famous blues guitarist who had many hits in the 20s and 30s.
He’s from the tiny village of Thomson, right in the heart of the Bible belt, and as I get closer there are wooden churches every half mile.
Jones Grove Baptist church is where he’s buried, with a picture of a 12 string guitar on his headstone. I take a picture and as I’m about to get back into my car, I get talking to two old black men setting up the church.
I tell them I’m here to see the grave and surprisingly they tell me they remember him, even though he died in 1959. They never heard him play but they knew he was famous — he was the only person in town who paid for a train ticket, rather than hopping the freights for free.
My next stop is the university town of Athens, famous for nurturing early new wave and alternative rock in the late 70s. Bands like R.E.M. and the B-52s developed in a derelict downtown where struggling musicians could rehearse and play.
The most celebrated is the 40 Watt Club, still going strong after all these years, but there are also a handful of other clubs presenting music of all kinds.
From here I make it to Atlanta, Georgia’s capital, with one of the South’s largest Jewish populations and a museum to match. The William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum has permanent displays dedicated to the Holocaust and Southern Jewish history.
I learn that Joseph Jacobs, a local pharmacist, was the first to dispense Coca Cola from his soda fountain but lost out when he made the mistake of selling his share in the company.
On the outskirts of the city is the Historic Oakland Cemetery with three dedicated Jewish areas — the second-oldest Jewish burial ground in Georgia, after an earlier cemetery in Savannah.
The old Jewish Burial Grounds date from 1860, and as the city’s Jewish population continued to grow, extra plots were soon needed.
On Jewish Hill, acquired in 1878, stand the impressive mausoleums of the German Jewish community, complete with elaborate statuary. Meanwhile, at the bottom is Jewish Flat, dating from 1892, where tall densely packed headstones in Hebrew reflect the burial traditions of Russian immigrants laid to rest here.
My final destination is Macon, some 90 miles south of Atlanta; birthplace of Little Richard and childhood home of Otis Redding. The Macon Music Trail takes you to the house where Richard was born as Richard Wayne Penniman, and then to a life-size statue of Otis in Gateway Park.
Killed in a plane crash in 1967, his widow Zelma still lives in the ranch he built just outside town. The Otis Redding Foundation has a small museum on Cotton Avenue and she’s here most days running their music school for local kids.
I get to hear some of them when their group, The Dream Team, kicks off the re-opening ceremony for Capricorn Sound Studios. Much of the archetypal Southern rock of the 70s was recorded here, but they’ve long been derelict.
Now on their 50th anniversary they’ve been comprehensively refurbished and you can see the famous Studio A where groups like the Marshall Tucker Band and the Allman Brothers recorded.
There’s also a museum, and the walls are lined with atmospheric black and white photographs from the studios’ heyday.
Another glimpse of the lifestyle back then comes at the Allman Brothers Big House. It’s a grand three-storey 1900 mansion where the band and families lived from 1969 to 1973.
Restored to how it once was, it’s stuffed full of memorabilia. Each room tells a different story and if you’re interested in original stage clothes and instruments then you’ll find it fascinating.
You can also get a taste of their southern diet. H&H Soul Food on Forsyth St, which fed most of the Capricorn musicians, is still going strong. It’s an archetypal 50s diner and after a trip hitting the road and following that Music Trail, their cooking is guaranteed to satisfy the largest of appetites.
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