📍Tindall Heights, Macon, GA 31201, USA
1944 – 1960“I was born in Dawson, Georgia, into a sharecropping family, and when I was five we moved to Tindall Heights, a public housing project in Macon. My father worked at Robins Air Force Base and preached on Sundays, and our home was full of gospel. I sang in the choir at Vineville Baptist Church and played drums for a gospel group, and I learned early that a song could lift a room. Macon in the 1950s was a music town. Little Richard had come out of these same streets, and I idolised him. At Ballard-Hudson High School I played in the band, and every Saturday I tried my luck at the teenage talent shows run by the disc jockey Hamp Swain, the King Bee, at the Douglass Theatre. The prize was five dollars, and I won it so many times singing Little Richard's Heebie Jeebies that they finally stopped letting me enter. When my father fell ill, I left school to help support the family, digging wells and working other jobs, but I never stopped singing. I joined Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers, and in 1962 a session in Memphis led to my first record at Stax. Songs like These Arms of Mine, Try a Little Tenderness and Dock of the Bay grew from the gospel and rhythm and blues I absorbed in Macon. I bought a ranch outside the city, the Big O Ranch, so my family could stay close to home. Today a statue of me stands by the river in Macon, and the Douglass Theatre, where I first won over a crowd, still welcomes young performers.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today