About Atlanta Rhythm Section
Atlanta Rhythm Section is an American Southern rock band formed in 1970 by Rodney Justo , Barry Bailey , Paul Goddard , Dean Daughtry , Robert Nix and J. R. Cobb . The band experienced its greatest chart success with Ronnie Hammond as lead singer 1972–1982. Hammond returned again 1988–2001. The band's current lineup consists of Justo, along with guitarists David Anderson and Steve Stone, keyboardist Lee Shealy, bassist Justin Senker and drummer Rodger Stephan.
In the spring of 1970, three former members of the Candymen and the Classics IV became the session band for the newly opened Studio One recording studio in Doraville, Georgia, near Atlanta.
After playing on other artists' recordings, the Atlanta Rhythm Section was christened in May 1970, with Justo , Barry Bailey , Paul Goddard , Daughtry , Nix and Cobb . Bailey and Goddard had played together in several groups and, like the Candymen, had also backed up Roy Orbison. The group's name was thought up by Studio One's owner Buddy Buie and his two partners in the venture, Cobb and Bill Lowery.
Signed by Decca Records, the band released their first album, Atlanta Rhythm Section, in January 1972. Due to the record's limited commercial success, Justo quit the band, relocating to New York City as a session singer. He was replaced by Ronnie Hammond, assistant to Studio One's engineer, Rodney Mills. Mills also later worked as the band's road manager and sound man and Buie, also the band's manager and producer as well as co-owner of Studio One, is listed first on almost all of their songwriting credits. With Hammond on board, the band's second release, Back Up Against the Wall , also failed to sell and Decca dumped ARS from their roster.
Buie's manager, Jeff Franklin, who was based in New York and had gotten the group the deal with Decca, was then able to get ARS signed to Polydor for their third release, Third Annual Pipe Dream, in August 1974. As a special thank-you to Bailey, Daughtry, and Goddard for appearing on his pioneering 1970 Christian Rock album Mylon, We Believe, Mylon LeFevre performed on one of the Pipe Dream tracks, "Jesus Hearted People" . Pipe Dream yielded the band's first hit single, "Doraville", which peaked at #35 and pulled the album up to #74 on Billboard's Top 200 by November 1974.
The band's next two releases, Dog Days and Red Tape , sold in even lesser quantities, but ARS toured extensively in 1975–1976, with numerous shows in the South, Northeast and Midwest. On July 18, 1975, the band appeared with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra during an outdoor show in Atlanta in Chastain Park; in August, they opened for The Who at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida and for The Rolling Stones at the Municipal Auditorium in West Palm Beach, Florida.
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