About the time The Georgian Harmony—a collection of 92 songs by Sacred Harp composer Raymond C. Hamrick of Macon, Georgia—was printed in 2008, Raymond found more of the music he had written earlier and of course I have type-set it. It had not been checked in detail as were the songs included in the first Georgian Harmony, and to help him edit the music people from at least 8 states (and one European country), at various locations and times, sang and recorded most of these songs. The comments were collected and discussed with Raymond, and changes and corrections have been made. A few songs have not yet been sung, but we plan to do that soon.
Instead of printing a second volume, we currently plan to publish a second combined edition containing about 250 pages of music. Bill Hollingsworth has set the first weekend in September as the target date for the debut of the second edition, and I will try very hard to meet that deadline.
We are making available a limited number of 1st edition Georgian Harmony songbooks, autographed by Raymond and Hugh McGraw (on the page of the pen and ink drawing of the two by Sara Lynch-Thomason). These books are available for $50.00 (plus shipping) and will go to help defray the cost of printing the 2nd edition. If you are interested in purchasing one of these, please contact me, John Hollingsworth.
The next all day singing from the current edition of The Georgian Harmony, will be at The Raymond Hamrick Birthday Singing, the Saturday before the 2nd Sunday of June (the 9th) at the Civic Center in Roberta, Georgia.
The help of the community in singing and commenting on the music is much appreciated by all of us.
