Campaign for Capricorn’s Frank Fenter

Label co-founder gets a posthumous push for the Georgia Music Hall of Fame

When it comes to the history of Capricorn Records and Southern rock, most folks think of such names as label co-founders Alan and Phil Walden, the Allman Brothers, Dickey Betts and the likes – not Frank Fenter. Although he was a seminal figure in founding the Macon-based label – after a career with Atlantic Records in England where he helped sign Led Zeppelin, Yes, and King Crimson – Fenter has been largely forgotten. His stepson Robin Duner-Fenter hopes to preserve his memory with a push to induct him into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2010.

Fenter was 47 when he died of a heart attack in July 1983 in Macon. “He passed away at such a young age, and over the last two-and-a-half decades has been forgotten. But the music-industry people – people on the inside – are acutely aware that he’s been overlooked,” says Duner-Fenter. “I want to make sure that he’s remembered for the music he helped create and that’s still heard on the radio every day.”

Each year, the private, nonprofit Friends of Georgia Music Festival receives dozens of applications to be considered for approximately six induction awards into the Hall of Fame. Applicants must be recording artists or nonperformers who were either born in Georgia or who lived in the state for at least one year while going on to earn “national acclaim for achievements in the field of recorded music.”

Last November, Duner-Fenter created a Facebook page to support the push for Fenter’s entry into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. Since then, supporters have come out of the woodwork. One note that Duner-Fenter received from former Capricorn recording artist Col. Bruce Hampton reads: “No one was like Frank Fenter. He deserves a lot of recognition that he never got. One of the smartest men I have ever met. He was always a gentleman. Lots of class, always.”

Though Friends of Georgia Music Festival meets on Jan. 20 to vote on this year’s inductees, they remain tight-lipped about who’s in the running. The final announcement isn’t made until summer 2010. “The consensus is that it’s not a matter of if he should be accepted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame,” says Duner-Fenter, “but when.”