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William Orten Carlton = ORT.
Encounters With an Athens Icon
B efore he gets up, he has to find an answer.
The bluish light from the UGA Main Library's large-
text computer glows off his thick glasses as he scans
web page after web page of old 45-rpm record informa
tion. He's been singing the single to himself all night, eyes
wide, hands beating invisible instruments, lips bellowing but
producing no sound. But he needs to know the title, the artist,
the year, and, most importantly, where he can get his hands
on it. _
The search is not quick. He sees lots of familiar titles, and
new songs occasionally burst into his mental record player. An
ink-stained hand creeps up to scratch his scruffy grey hair. But
after hundreds of hits, he beams at the last entry on the big,
pixellated screen.
"Gad," Ort chuckles. "That's the one!"
. seems Ort was born to pay attention to the details.
William Orten Carlton came into the world on July 26,
1949, delivered at St Mary's hospital in Athens, GA.
Ort notes that he's talking about the old St. Mary's and gives
the address (350 North Milledge Avenue), although now "it's
just an empty lot." Ort's father, William M. Carlton, came to
Athens in 1946 to take a position as an assistant professor of
botany at the University of Georgia*after World War II. No, his
transplanted family bears no relation to the Carltons for whom
Athens' Carlton Street was named, but Ort will gladly discuss
that family (and their ancestral home on Cloverhurst Avenue,
and the also unrelated town of Carlton 15 miles away^ anyway.
His father loved genealogical research, and none of it was lost
on Ort, who incorporates it as part of his own story to this day.
Cht's brand of Carltons built a home at 166 Hart Avenue,
between Broad Street and King Avenue, to welcome their son
in that summer of '49 r but they soon outgrew it, building
a house in Homewood Hills in which Ort still lives. Ort left
his mark on Athens' public schools—attending Chase Street
Elementary, Clarke County Junior High (now Clarke Middle), and
Athens High (which became Clarke Central circa 1970)—and
proceeded to the University of Georgia, where he took 13
years to graduate in broadcasting. Ort's mind and goals drifted
during his time at UGA, but his affinity for and encyclopedic
knowledge of trivia was always exercised. A music aficionado
adept at finding rare records, Ort began a popular radio show
on Sunday nights on WUOG called "Ort's Oldies Radio Problem,"
which aired off and on from 1972, when Ort was a founding
member of the college radio station, until 1981, well after his
graduation in 79. Ort also took a break from college to manage
a short-lived used record store, Ort's Oldies Records Shop. Ort's
business cropped up in several downtown locations between
1972 and 1975, and it most likely existed as a space in which
Ort could add to his own record collection and talk music *
with local enthusiasts, beyond any ambition for serious profit.
Ort's Oldies, however, became a symbol of Ort's prominence in
Athens' erupting music scene.
Ort's detailed knowledge of music minutiae probably broke
him into Athens' live music scene with ease. Ort was a guest of
honor and sometimes the host of innumerable house parties,
and he explains that Athens developed a "bar band" culture
late because "of course, Athens didn't have legal mixed drinks
until 1968." By that time, Ort had gotten into the habit of
introducing bands with branching monologues on a band's
history and members, music history in general, and whatever
ruminations the scene brought to mind. "They let me up there,
and I would just yammer on until they were ready," Ort remem
bers, "and then I'd cut my conversation off right there." Of his
extensive vinyl collection, an empty space has yet to be filled
by an envied bootleg R.E.M. record with side one, cut one
entitled "Ort Introduction."
O rt became a prominent figure in Athens in the 1970s
and '80s, and his popularity moved a lot of newspapers
when he tried his hand at print journalism. A weekly
newspaper called The Athens Observer came into Ort's orbit
when he would run funny ads for Ort's Oldies, and eventually
Ort hijacked his own bit of editorial space to write a column.
Pete McCommons, now editor and publisher of Flagpole, recalls
meeting Ort when they both worked at the Observer. "When
he got his teeth into a subject he researched it and wrote it
up exhaustively," McCommons remembers. "[One article] he
did was to mention all the cities and counties in Georgia with
the same name, such as Madison County and Madison, GA,
Macon County and Macon, GA." Flagpole started up in 1987 to
compete with Athens Nightlife, later called Classic City Live;
Ort chafed at the fact that "Since the 40 Watt Club did not
advertise there [in Athens Nightlife], that entire segment of
the music community was truncated, as if it didn't exist," so
the music guru naturally gravitated to Flagpole instead. At
Flagpole, Ort wrote columns on his record finds, offbeat radio
stations of the past and present, and his meandering road trips
to find records, small towns (and postcards from them), good
food, and beer. Readers devoured Ort's quirky blends of trivia
and plot, and Flagpole would tout him as a big draw on its
front cover: "Also in this issue, Ort!" McCommons remembers
that Ort's popularity was an essential factor in the young pub
lication's survival. "Ort was already a presence downtown when
Flagpole came along," McCommons notes, "and his blessing
helped to legitimize the paper
and speed its acceptance."
While life in Athens cer
tainly fed Ort's creativity, he
struggled with his popularity,
which often made him feel
like a caricature. In 1987,
the now-iconic Athens music
documentary, Athens, GA:
Inside/Out, featured Ort as an
expert on Athens music and
culture. So many people who
knew about Athens knew him,
too—after all, a 1983 People
magazine article on Athens'
rock scene had presented him
to the nation as Athens' "rock
'n' roll Johnny Appleseed"
due to his record-trading and
publicizing tactics—so the
filmmakers did not bother to
identify him with a white,’
wavy label as "Ort" until an
hour into the documentary.
"Athens can be a celebra
tion... For me it was becom
ing a celebration of defeat," a Slimmer Ort with auburn hair,
his same big glasses, and a can of beer held kitschily in hand
says on screen. "I really felt that I wasn't a person; I was
a single-dimensional comic book character. Every .day I felt
as if I was getting up to be inked into my own panels." Ort
eventually began a hiatus from Flagpole almost 20 years later,
in 2005, partly for this same reason. His knack for finding
and reviewing (in minute detail) rare beers had sold well in
Athens' bar culture, and Flagpole had recently dubbed him its
"beer editor." But Ort felt that his talents were again being
exploited. "There are people in the beer industry who would
want me to write 52 beer columns a year," Ort mutters. "But
I'd done my work."
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