


Conjuring a cavalcade of intimate personal portraits, deftly placed in vividly written panoramas of social change, he boldly brings to life the experiences of people in one night club in one city. In A Night at the Sweet Gum Head, Martin Padgett brilliantly illuminates Atlanta as a microcosm of this social and sexual revolution. Review Quotes A portrait of the wild and wooly Atlanta of the 1970s, when the crickets of a thousand back yards gave way to the pounding 4/4 beat of Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor.-Bo Emerson, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution A fizzy tale of civil rights, quaaludes and music.When stories such as these get told, it is a cause for celebration.-Elon Green, The New York Times Book Review The 1970s was a decade of enormous consequence for queer communities across the nation. Conducting interviews with many of the major figures and reading through deteriorating gay archives, Padgett expertly re-creates Atlanta from a time when a vibrant, new queer culture of drag and pride came into being. Against this optimism for visibility and rights, gay people lived with daily police harassment and drug dealing and murder in their discos and drag clubs. Martin Padgett evokes the fantabulous disco decade by going deep into the lives of two men who shaped and were shaped by this city: John Greenwell, an Alabama runaway who found himself and his avocation performing as the exquisite Rachel Wells and Bill Smith, who took to the streets and city hall to change antigay laws. There, the Sweet Gum Head was the club for achieving drag stardom. Book Synopsis Coursing with a pumped-up beat, gay Atlanta was the Souths mecca-a beacon for gays and lesbians growing up in its homophobic towns and cities. About the Book An electric and intimate story of 1970s gay Atlanta through its bedazzling drag clubs and burgeoning rights activism.
