George R. Garner was a musician, singer, actor, educator and advocate for the study of African American music history. He was born in Chicago in 1906 and graduated from Chicago Musical College. He was the first African American singer to solo with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
His talent was immediately noted when he moved to Pasadena in 1933. Within a year he had become the music director of Friendship Baptist Church and the first African American man to star in a leading role in a Pasadena Playhouse production—Finder’s Luck by Alice Haines Baskin.
Passionate about African American music history, Garner got a degree in music education at USC and became the first African American teacher in Pasadena. He founded a choral group called the George Garner Negro Chorus. In 1937, he founded the Pasadena Association for the Study of Negro Life and History so that African-American musical traditions could be preserved which was founded in 1937 and met at First Methodist Church, 500 E. Colorado Blvd. The association provided a musical library with the goal of preserving spirituals and also gave musicians rehearsal space. It was set up in a studio at 470 Blake Street (no longer standing).
In 1959, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors honored him as executive vice president of the George Garner Music Research Center of Pasadena. He was the regional director of the National Association of Negro Musicians. He became a music critic and arts editor for the Los Angeles Sentinel in the 1950s. And in 1959 he was honored by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors as the executive vice president of the George Garner Music Research Center of Pasadena.