In 1940, Oscar Lockhart was operating a pharmacy in Chamblee. He and wife Nelle, brother Thomas, daughter Ruth Lockhart Bean, son-in-law Albert Bean and one lodger all lived in the home on Chamblee Dunwoody Road. Lockhart’s Pharmacy was an independant pharmacy.

Jane Anderson Autry, born in Dunwoody in 1931, told me of her grandfather driving she and her siblings to Lockhart’s Drug Store in Chamblee to have a bottle of Coca-Cola or an ice cream cone.

Before the Lockhart family moved to Chamblee, they lived on Rosalia Street in southeast Atlanta. Their daughter Ruth was born in 1917. She attended Girls High School. Oscar and Nelle Lockhart operated two locations of Lockhart’s Pharmacy, one in Lakewood Heights and one in Grant Park.

Lockhart graduated from Girls High in 1935.  That same year, she entered the Ray Perkins National Amateur Hour competition, a singing competition held in New York.  Lockhart won the contest and afterwards performed for one week at The French Casino on Broadway. (Atlanta Constitution, July 24, 1964, A Ukulele, Music and People-That’s Life for Ruth Bean)

In 1935, Ruth lockhart sang for President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Warm Springs, Georgia. He requested the sone “Home on the Range,” wanting to hear it nine times. Her told Lockhart to drop by if she was ever in Washington D. C., so Lockhart took him up on that offer when she went there for a graduation trip. She was able to sit in the chair where he gave his famous Fireside Chats.

Ruth Lockhart married Al Bean in 1936 and by 1940 they were living in Chamblee with her parents. They met when they played together in a band, Ruth on ukelele and Al on guitar. She left the music business for a short time and the couple had a son.

By the 1960s Ruth and Al Bean had opened a music store in Chamblee known as Musicland. They sold musical instruments and gave music lessons. Their son Bob and Ruth’s parents all helped with the business.

Among the archives of DeKalb History Center are the Ruth Bean/Musicland collection.  The materials were donated by a former student of the Beans in Florida and includes many photographs, personal notes to the Beans, and a few newspaper clippings. 

For nine years, Ruth Lockhart worked as a singer and radio personality for WSB in Atlanta.  She worked alongside Bert Parks, Ernest Rogers, and Perry Bechtel (also known as Banjo King of the South).  You may remember Bert Parks from his many years as emcee of the Miss America pageant.   

At Musicland, Ruth Lockhart Bean taught ukulele and guitar lessons to children of her friends and neighbors. In the newspaper, she compared it to teaching music in a country store.  She kept a scrapbook at Musicland and brought it out occasionally to entertain the students and their parents.

Bean described her love of music for the Atlanta Constitution, saying “now my greatest joy is to project the joy I received as a youngster because of music.  Playing ukulele was just something I had to do.”  She first began playing ukulele at age six.  The Beans formed a group of ukulele students from Musicland to perform for local clubs, civic organizations and student groups.  

Ruth and Al Bean later moved to Sebring, Florida and continued to teach music to children at their new Musicland location.   

After I first wrote about Ruth Lockhart and Musicland, I heard from a couple of people who took music lessons there. One of them was the daughter of couple who had a dentist office in the same building as Musicland. Another individual was inspired by Ruth Lockhart Bean during her time living and teaching ukelele in Florida.