Exploring the legacy of Albany, southwest Georgia’s musical torch-bearers

ALBANY – Until a few years ago, when music lovers talked about entertainers in the music industry with Albany/southwest Georgia ties who had “made it,” they usually brought up “the two Rays and a few other guys.”

The aforementioned Rays are, of course Charles and Stevens, the former born here, the latter a singer who made his mark in the Good Life City before moving to Atlanta and forging a Grammy-winning career.

But music in Albany – music that made its way out of the confines of southwest Georgia and onto the regional, national and international scenes — is certainly more than the lauded works of Charles and Stevens.

A number of artists with local roots whose music has spread to the masses are among the elite who left their mark on the legacy of southwest Georgia music.

Charles and famed bandleader Harry James both were born in Albany but spent little time here. Their careers took off – for Charles, in country and R&B; for James, in the Big Band era – and each is recognized as a trailblazer in his musical genre.

Stevens found his musical calling after moving to Albany as a young boy. He went on to win two Grammys, for “Everything Is Beautiful,” and “Misty,” and racked up 11 nominations.

Anyone who’s ever listened to a country music radio station the last couple of decades knows that Luke Bryan – who was raised in Leesburg but honed his musical talent playing at clubs in Albany and other southwest Georgia venues – has won every award the genre has to offer. Many of his hits were written or co-written by award-winning Albany songwriter Dallas Davidson, who penned hit songs for other country artists as well.

Cole Swindell, another current country star who played in and around Albany before moving to Nashville to find fame, now finds himself regularly in the Top 40.

In between the Rays and the current country stars, there are plenty of other artists who flirted with or enjoyed a taste of the big time.

The Lost Trailers, which included Albany’s Nielson brothers, Geoffrey and Andrew, had a Top 10 Country hit (“Holler Back”); the hard rocking band Messendger won the very first MTV “Headbangers Ball, a competition that came about when the now-defunct network actually used to play music; and the Albany hip-hop duo Field Mob (Darien “Smoke” Crawford and Shawn “Shawn J” Johnson) was nominated for a Grammy and had a pair of albums that climbed the national charts.

The list of musicians whose talent escaped the boundaries of their roots is a long one: Monroe Brown, Kinchafoonee Cowboys, Holly Drive, the Bo Henry Band, Evan Barber and the Dead Gamblers, Ole-E, Unbreakable Bloodline, Discount Superstar and others each has played a part in creating a sound that is uniquely of southwest Georgia but embraced by a much wider audience.

In the next few weeks, The Albany Herald will take a deep dive into the music scene that has evolved in the city, looking at the artists and the venues of yesterday and today, and telling some of the stories that carried these artists out of area garages and onto stages that gave them access to wider – and hungrier – audiences.