Riley Puckett was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1986. In addition to making records, he appeared in stage shows and worked on radio stations in Atlanta and other Georgia cities, as well as selected eastern and midwestern cities. His repertoire included novelty songs, religious songs, traditional folk songs, cowboy songs, and ballads from the field of popular music. Puckett recorded as a solo artist into the early 1940s, creating a discography of more than 200 records on such labels as Columbia, Decca, and Bluebird. Puckett was a charter member of the influential string band Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers and continued to record with the group through their last session in 1934. Yodeling was employed as an embellishment by numerous country music vocalists well into the 1940s. One of Puckett’s songs, “Rock All Our Babies to Sleep,” established him as probably the first country-music artist to yodel on records. These recording sessions yielded vocal selections by Puckett and fiddle tunes by Tanner. They were the first country-music artists to record for that firm. In 1924 Puckett accompanied fiddler Gid Tanner to New York, where, on March 7 and 8, they recorded twelve songs and tunes for the Columbia Phonograph Company. Until going off the air in 1926, they remained one of the station’s most popular acts. They made their debut on Atlanta’s six-month-old radio station, WSB, on September 18, 1922. Newspaper reporters covering these events referred to him as the “Bald Mountain Caruso” in admiration of his renditions of such songs as “When You and I Were Young, Maggie” and “Sleep, Baby, Sleep.” For several years Puckett played and sang with the Home Town Boys, a string-band ensemble composed of Atlanta-area musicians. His vocalizing was a regular feature at the Georgia Old-Time Fiddlers’ Conventions. Later, as a teenager, he taught himself to play banjo, and in time he became a contest winner on the instrument.

While attending the Georgia Academy for the Blind in Macon, he learned to play the piano. Born near Alpharetta in 1894, Puckett was blinded shortly after birth, presumably the result of misapplication of medicine for his eyes.

Pickin' on Peachtree by Wayne W. Daniel