[This is a lightly edited repeat of an article we published in 2018 and republished last fall. Since our web traffic has increased substantially in the intervening years I thought it would be good to introduce new readers to some of our evergreen past works]
Joe South was born Joseph Alfred Souter in 1940. He is arguably the most famous person buried in a cemetery in Mableton, at least among music fans of the baby boom generation.
He grew up in the Adamsville section of southwest Atlanta. When he was twelve years old he met Bill Lowery, who hosted a country music show on WGST, under the name Uncle Eb Brown. Lowery encouraged the young Souter in his musical career…