You've seen him at numerous bluegrass festivals over the past twenty-five years. He's the friendly guy behind the table covered with bluegrass albums, CDs, and tapes that he'll be glad to sell you, but he won't twist your arm. He's Carl Queen, president of Atteiram Records, a recording company that made its debut twenty-five years ago in Marietta, Georgia. Now, if you hold the word Marietta up to a mirror you'll see how he hit upon the name for his business venture.

The recording that launched Atteiram Records was a 45 rpm disc featuring well-known North Georgia fiddler Randall Collins who put "Fiddler's Dream" on one side and "Georgia Cotton" on the other. With Carl as producer, the tunes were recorded in the Hilltop studios in Nashville and pressed by Vista Sound in Marietta. Other musicians heard on the record are Buddy Spicher, fiddle; Curtis Blackwell, guitar; Skip Payne, bass; Larry Jefferson, mandolin; and Vic Jordan, banjo. The 45 was released in April of 1971, and in the summer of that year Atteiram's first album made its appearance. Titled "Randall Collins Stands Tall in Georgia Cotton" and bearing the number API-1015, the 33 1/3 rpm disc featured the same musicians who had appeared on the 45. In addition to the two tunes that had been released earlier on the 45, the album also included "Take Me Home Country Roads," "Hell on the Freeway," "Cotton Ball Waltz," "Train No. 5," "Me and My Fiddle," "Yellow Rock," "Sloe Creek," and "Buck Snort." Seven of the tunes were composed by Collins.

Since the inauguration of Atteiram, Carl has produced some 300 albums and CDs. The list of artists who have recorded for him reads like a Who's Who of Bluegrass entertainers. Among the locally and nationally well-known performers whose music has graced the Atteiram label are Jim and Jesse McReynolds, James Monroe, Carl Story, the Pinnacle Boys, Birch Monroe, the Sullivan Family, Johnny & Gerald and the Georgia Mountain Boys, Bluegrass Incorporated, Hylo Brown, Don Reno, Red Smiley, Bill Harrell, Blake Williams, Wayne Lewis, Hoot Hester, James Watson, Doodle and the Golden River Grass, Raymond Fairchild, Bill and Wilma Millsaps, the Fritts Family, the Powell Family, and Curtis Hicks and the Old Time Strings.

The Atteiram label has not been devoted exclusively to bluegrass music. Carl has also recorded country, rock and roll, and gospel/soul artists. The vast majority of Atteiram's output, however, has been by bluegrass musicians. Atteiram's top-selling album is "Pickaway" featuring bluegrass banjoist Vic Jordan. On this 1972 release Jordan is accompanied by an impressive array of heavy-weight musicians. Norman Blake plays lead guitar, Buck White is featured on mandolin, Butch Robbins provides the bass, Charlie Collins plays rhythm guitar, and Jody Maphis (son of Joe and Rose Lee) plays drums.

Another highly successful Atteiram album was "Me and My Fiddle" featuring Jesse McReynolds (better known as the mandolinist with the Jim and Jesse duet) playing two or three fiddles on most cuts.

Carl's involvement in music has not been restricted solely to recording it. Over the years he has operated two song publishing companies (ASCAP-affiliated Tres-Lynn Publishing Company and BMI-affiliated Atteiram Publishing Company), promoted bluegrass festivals, and worked as a musician in several bands. While still attending high school in his hometown, Blairsville, Georgia, Carl played guitar and sang in a bluegrass band. In 1954, fresh out of high school, he was playing bass with the Garrett Brothers who had a radio program on WGGA in Gainesville, Georgia. The group also played for dances and appeared in stage shows throughout the north Georgia area. In 1955 Carl played bass with a group called the Carolina Buddies heard on radio stations in Asheville, North Carolina, as well as in Gainesville. For two years, 1956 and 1957, Carl played guitar and bass and sang with George "Sleepy" Head and His Blue Ridge Mountain Boys, a popular Atlanta-based country band that earlier had gained national exposure with an appearance in the movie "I'd Climb The Highest Mountain" starring Susan Hayward.

In the early 1960s Carl toured with the Wilburn Brothers, the Osborne Brothers, and Loretta Lynn. Following his stint with these Nashville-based artists, he returned to the Atlanta area where he continued to perform with such groups as Tennessee and Smitty Smith who had a show on Channel 11 television, Jimmy Smart and the Atlanta Country Opry, and the Swinging Gentlemen Band sponsored by country music radio station WPLO. In the late 1960s he worked with country artist Dave Dudley on an extended Canadian tour, went on the road with Tommy Cash, and played bass and sang with Chuck Atha. During the 1970s Carl performed with such artists as Joe Shinall, Don Hamilton, Luke Curl, Beth Monroe, and Junior Samples of "Hee-Haw" fame.

Carl put on his first bluegrass festival in 1978 at the Fair Oaks Recreation Center in Marietta. He booked 27 groups for the event. All of them had recorded for Atteiram, including such artists as Charlie Cline, Hylo Brown, Joe Stewart, Carl Sauceman, and James Monroe. Carl put festival promotion on the back burner for some fifteen years while he pursued his day job at the Lockheed aircraft factory in Marietta and kept Atteiram Records going in his spare time. In 1993 he got back into the festival promotion business with a show at Dillard's Music Park in Rome, Georgia. Dillard's was the scene of three festivals he put on in 1994, two in 1995, and one so far this year. In 1994 he also did two festivals at Hamby Mountain Park in Baldwin, Georgia.

Carl Queen was born and reared in Blairsville, Georgia, where, he says, "I grew up on bluegrass music." After graduating from high school at the age of 16, he attended Truett-McConnell Junior College in Cleveland, Georgia, before taking a job with the Lockheed-Georgia Company in Marietta in 1953. He also attended Young Harris College in Young Harris, Georgia, the Atlanta Division of the University of Georgia (now Georgia State University) in Atlanta and Volunteer State College in Nashville, Tennessee. He graduated with a degree in business administration from Tennessee State University in Nashville.

It was Carl's wide experience as a performer and his acquaintance with leading country artists that prompted him to get into the business of record production and song publication. His friends would seek his help in their efforts to obtain recording contracts or to get their songs published. Rather than serve as a go-between, Carl decided to do the song publishing and record producing himself whenever he encountered what he considered to be good material. He has always looked for talent and has been known to turn down a recording opportunity because he felt that the aspiring artist did not meet his standards of musicianship.

Carl learned early on that operating a successful recording business does not end when the product leaves the assembly line. The recordings have to be distributed and promoted in such a way that they receive maximum public exposure. Over the years, Carl's promotional activities have involved sending copies of his output to appropriate radio stations in hopes that disc jockeys will like the records and give them air play. Recordings must also be sent to trade publications for review. Carl states that the kind of review a record receives has a considerable effect on sales. Good reviews help sales, and bad reviews generally have the reverse effect. "Occasionally, however," Carl says, "an unfavorable review will help sales. If a review makes a record sound bad enough, some people will buy it just to find out for themselves if it's all that bad." Atteiram records have been reviewed in the major bluegrass publications, and through the more than 30 distribution channels that Carl has used, they have found their way into music stores all over the United States and in several foreign countries as well.

Carl retired from Lockheed in 1990, and he and his wife, Shirley, now make their home in Blairsville. Carl commutes to Marietta about once a week where he spends a couple of days looking after the affairs of Atteiram Records. He knows that as long as there is bluegrass music there will be a demand for the music on records. He wants to be available to help satisfy that demand.