Highbrows, hillbillies, & hellfire

By Steve Goodson

Subjects: Amusements, Performing arts, history, Performing arts, History, Georgia, race relations, Race relations

Description: "Steve Goodson's social and cultural history of the New South's "Gate City" looks at the variety of public amusements available to Atlantans from the end of Reconstruction to the eve of the Great Depression, including theater, vaudeville, dime museums, movies, radio, and classical, blues, and country music. By showing how Atlantans embraced or condemned everything from burlesque to opera, Goodson reveals a city unsure of its identity and acutely sensitive to its image in the eyes of the nation.". "While the general populace hungered for novelty and diversion, middle-class Atlantans, white and black, saw entertainment as a source of - or threat to - status and respectability. Goodson traces the roots of this tension to the city's rapid and problematic growth, its uncomfortably diverse population, and its multiplying ties to national markets. At the same time he portrays some lively individuals who shaped Atlanta's entertainment scene. Among them are impresario Laurent DeGive, tightrope walker Professor Leon, patent-medicine salesman Yellowstone Kit, country music great Fiddlin' John Carson, and blues legends Bessie Smith and Blind Willie McTell. Goodson also brings to life the atmosphere of such venues as DeGive's resplendent Grand Opera House, George Johnson's tacky Museum of Living Wonders, the pioneering Trocadero vaudeville house, and the notorius 81 Theatre on Decatur Street, an avenue whose decadent promise rivaled that of Beale in Memphis and Bourbon in New Orleans. Milestone trends and events are also showcased: performances of the play Uncle Tom's Cabin and showings of the film Birth of a Nation, visits by the Metropolitan Opera Company, the debate over Sunday entertainment, the beginnings of broadcasts by "The Voice of the South" - radio station WSB - and the rise of Atlanta as the earliest capital of country and blues recording."--BOOK JACKET.