2007 Index of Winners

Not since Francine Reed settled here 25 years ago has a singer new to the Atlanta scene made such an indelible first impression as BERNADETTE SEACREST. The irony is that the jazz chanteuse is more popular in Europe than in her adopted city, but don’t expect that to last long. Seacrest sings torch songs with a fragile and haunting voice that is Billie Holiday cross-pollinated with Madeleine Peyroux. Both members of her two-piece band are alumni of Col. Bruce Hampton — former Aquarium Rescue Unit guitarist Charlie Williams and current Quark Alliance bassist Chris Dale. Seacrest, who moved to Atlanta from Albuquerque in 2006, didn’t even take up singing until six years ago. Catch her now before Atlanta finally discovers her. You’ll be struck first by her tattoos, then you’ll be captivated by her voice.

www.bernadetteseacrest.com

The blues is a universal feeling that transcends languages, social status and the constraints of musical genre. DANNY “MUDCAT” DUDECK knows that feeling intimately. He travels the globe spreading his version of the blues gospel and regularly works with a number of international blues-preservation organizations. Lucky for us, he gets back to town most weeks to play the tiny Northside Tavern. Whether performing solo, leading a smokin’ band or a tight, one-off jam session with a founding father or a group of novices, his soulful and emotive delivery evokes images of the hard times that fed the early blues pioneers. And Mudcat’s Bayou-baked, chicken-party revues can make even the most jaded music fan happy to be blue.

www.mudcatblues.com

When RAHBI takes the stage with a swagger that’s part pimp, part drag queen, it’s obvious why his arrival has caused such a stir among Atlanta’s staid soul scene. The background singer for Donnie stepped out of the shadows this year to unleash his own brand of “glamour soul.” It bears no resemblance to the singer/songwriter school of thought most of his Atlanta-based peers graduated from. Instead, Rahbi takes his cues from Prince — lace glove and all. During his “Strange Fruit” show in early 2007, he employed a pole dancer and stripper pole in his act. Yet his flamboyant stage show doesn’t overshadow the dramatic vocal ability he honed singing at his granddaddy’s Pentecostal church as a youngster. His appropriately titled live album, Rahbi-Raw, is scheduled for a fall release.

www.myspace.com/rahbi

Not much is going down in Buckhead since the neighborhood purged its nightlife, but plenty is going up. Atlanta hasn’t skyscraped this feverishly since the downtown/Midtown boom in the late ’80s and early ’90s. By the end of the year, the title “Buckhead’s Tallest Building” will have changed hands twice in 2007. Come ’08, the title will belong to SOVEREIGN. Inside a curving, 635-foot-tall exterior that kind of looks like a giant Ionic Breeze, Sovereign will offer office, retail, restaurants and 93 condos that will cost up to $12 million. Here’s hoping the mixed-use monolith encourages more centralized living, working and playing — and thus less driving, driving and driving.

Tower Place 200, 3348 Peachtree Road, Suite 1095. 404-266-3344. www.sovereignbuckhead.com

After work and every weekend, THE PATH TRAIL connecting Freedom Parkway to downtown Decatur fills up. Joggers jog it. Pet owners empty their dogs along it. Parents push their high-performance strollers on it. Cyclists cruise it. The paved trail, maintained by the nonprofit PATH Foundation, goes from Freedom Park through Candler Park, Lake Claire, East Lake and into Decatur. The only section of trail where you’ll have to get on the street or the municipal sidewalk is in ped-friendly Candler Park. Readers with especially capacious lungs, take note: The trail continues past Decatur to Stone Mountain.

www.pathfoundation.org

If America is addicted to oil (as even President Bush admitted in 2006), then Atlanta is a jittery crack whore for petro. Our sprawl and the state’s dearth of leaders willing to go to bat for regional mass transit or smart growth make the metro area’s prosperity especially vulnerable to spikes in oil prices or dips in supply. Enter ROB DEL BUENO. With help from the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and a corps of volunteers, the former Man or Astro-man? bassist makes and sells biodiesel — a clean alternative to petroleum diesel made from used cooking oil. Del Bueno’s fuel powers a small fleet of cars and buses around town. And unlike our country’s oil titans, he doesn’t receive gazillions in government subsidies. 250 Arizona St.

www.refuelbiodiesel.org

Last year, we dubbed AJC Editorial Page Editor Cynthia Tucker “best columnist”; six months later she won the slightly less prestigious Pulitzer Prize. Coincidence? We think not. This year, we’re granting CL’s honor to Tucker’s deputy editorial page editor. JAY BOOKMAN attacks his topics with a strong sense of justice, well-aimed wit and even wisdom, as he did with a July column slyly protesting the hypocrisy of the district attorney who prosecuted teenager Genarlow Wilson for having sex with another teenager. Over the years, Bookman has particularly distinguished himself with fair-minded, powerful columns on the Iraq fiasco and Georgia’s disastrous transportation policies — both of which he saw coming with painful clarity. We can’t say this will lead to a Pulitzer, but there is a precedent.

www.ajc.com

Few hints of the Battle of Atlanta have survived the city’s bulldozers and steamrollers. Just north of the city, Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park offers a more complete, and scenic, view of the battle that preceded Atlanta’s fall. But if you really want to feel the scope of the last war fought on Southern soil, head about 100 miles north to CHICKAMAUGA AND CHATTANOOGA NATIONAL MILITARY PARK. The Chickamauga part of the park, which is in Georgia, looks and feels like a hallowed old battlefield: rolling fields, idle cannons, somber memorials. It was the site of one of the South’s last big victories. U.S. troops retreated north to Chattanooga, Tenn., regrouped there, broke out of the city, and then, under the leadership of William Tecumseh Sherman, marched on to Atlanta. Parcels of the park commemorate clashes in and around Chattanooga, including Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge.

www.nps.gov/chch