UWG News Archive

Public History CD cover gets award

Spetember 12, 2003

CARROLLTON, GA - The Center for Public History at the University of West Georgia will accept an American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) Certificate of Commendation on Friday, Sept. 19, for its compact disc and publication “Everybody’s Tuned to the Radio: Rural Music Traditions in West Georgia, 1947-1979.”

UWG News Photo The AASLH Annual Awards Program, now in its 58th year, is one of the most prestigious recognition programs for achievement in the preservation and interpretation of local, state and regional history. The UWG Center for Public History will be honored at a special banquet during the association’s annual meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, along with 91 other 2003 award winners from around the United States.

“We are very pleased to receive this national recognition,” said Dr. Ann McCleary, director of the Center for Public History and associate professor of history. “Coupled with our concerts and school programs, this project reflects the mission of the center to research, document, preserve and promote public discussion of the history of West Georgia and the surrounding region.”

The Center for Public History initiated the award-winning regional music project in 2001 when former graduate student Mick Buck, who is now the center’s music curator, began conducting interviews with traditional musicians who played on Carrollton’s first radio station, WLBB. After he discovered that they had had recordings of their music produced at home or at the radio station, Buck began compiling their songs.

With grant funding from the Georgia Folklife Program, sponsored by the Georgia Council for the Arts and the Georgia Humanities Council, and additional support from Sony Music, the College of Arts and Sciences and individuals in the community, Buck produced a CD that captures the feeling of old-time radio music. The unique collection of country, folk, gospel and bluegrass music and down-home radio chatter pays tribute to the pickers, singers and radio personalities who have helped shape, preserve and promote rural music traditions in the West Georgia Piedmont.

McCleary credits the work’s high quality to Buck, who undertook the project for his Master of Arts thesis in public history. He has already won several awards for the CD, including a Historic Preservation Award from the Carroll County Historical Society and the UWG Graduate Student Research Award for 2002, along with a more personal award from the musicians with whom he worked.

“Without the support of all the musicians and community members who welcomed me into their homes and shared their stories and music, this project could have never happened,” says Buck.

“Everybody’s Tuned to the Radio” is currently available for sale at the Center for Public History in Pafford Hall, Room 207, on the UWG campus, and at several stores on the Carrollton square: Clayworks, Horton’s Books, and Burson’s Feed and Seed. For more information, contact the center at 770-838-3141 or visit its web site at www.westga.edu/~history/center.htm. A complete copy of the CD liner notes is available on the web site.

The Center for Public History is currently completing a second CD of regional music featuring Alton Stitcher. Born near Villa Rica in 1916, Stitcher is a folksinger and songwriter who absorbed the old folk songs and hymns he heard while growing up on farms and in mill villages around Carroll County. The upcoming CD, which is supported by a grant from the Georgia Folklife Program with assistance from Sony Music, is expected to be available through the center by early November 2003.

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