(male speaker) One thing about those juke joints, especially in the country, those people, man, they was frustrated.

They'd work all week long and on the weekend let it all hang out.

Come out to the club, you close to the people.

You got this clown over here talkin' turkey.

You got this big-legged, fine woman, legs all crossed and talkin' stuff.

(male speaker) Honky-tonks, smoke... loud noise, a lot of beer, a lot of women... a lot of... a lot of fights.

From here to New York, Florida, Texas, I've seen just about all of 'em, and all are about the same.

Most small towns, there was just one.

There was just one bar, one club.

That was the honky-tonk, and you went there.

That's really where the town came together.

♪ [blues music] ♪ ♪ (male narrator) Juke joints, honky-tonks, the Chitlin' Circuit, the Kerosene Circuit... much of what we know as modern music was shaped and forme on the back roads of the South.

Blues, rock, country, and jazz can be easily traced to the rhythms and melodies of Africans and Europeans.

♪ ...in a pot of gold.

♪♪ Folk music has always been here.

There's not really a... a start date.

Folk music is a very personal music.

You know, it has broad categories-- string band, bluegrass, gospel-- but it's a very individual, personal musical expression.

Native Americans, obviously, were the first to express themselves musically on this continent, and that had been a part of the culture here for thousands of years.

It's interesting because they-- the honky-tonk and the juke joint-- parallel themselves in many ways.

They were an outlet for people to relax, to enjoy music, to have a drink, and to eat.

(male speaker) Typically, what juke joints were were cinder block buildings in the woods somewhere.

Dirt floor.

If they're lucky, they had a poured concrete floor.

They were not air-conditioned.

They were heated by a kerosene heater.

And that's the place that they would go and have a great time and party.

(Taylor) Outside of work, outside of church, you know, juke joint-- my understanding is one feeling on the origin of the word juke is that it's a Gullah word, joog, which means "disorderly" or "rambunctious" or "rowdy."

So juke joints certainly had a reputation for being a little wild.

After emancipation, you had sharecropping and tenant farming, not an easy life.

Both white and black folks were working on hardscrabble farms.

The juke joint was a place to really cut loose, and the honky-tonks served the same purpose.

This was a place to go and to play, uh...music.

And like Pappy and Snuffy, folks would travel these as a circuit.

You wouldn't just play at one.

This is what these guys did for a living.

(male speaker) In the '30s, Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Charlie and Bill Monroe, were on a station in Greenville.

Acts would come through and usually stay for a season.

They'd work the schoolhouses around the area and then go on to another area.

Well, the honky-tonk used to be where you went on a Saturday night, you know, dressed up, and drank beer, and there was usually a band.

If there wasn't a band, there was the jukebox.

(narrator) It was once said that nothing good happens in a juke joint or honky-tonk, but many would argue that point.

The dining might not be five star and the clientele not upper-crust, but there's something unique about these places that keep people coming back.

(male speaker) When you first walk in the juke joint, you're probably gonna say, I shouldn't be in here.

Then, once you hear the music and see the people, the hospitality of the people, you know, you're gonna realize, this is not so bad, and it gets better and better.

By the time the first hour's over, you're having a ball.

Christmas lights on the walls and big, ole 40 ounces of-- they didn't serve little cans of beer in nice glasses.

It all came out of 40-ounce jugs of Champale.

You know, really...interesting, interesting decor on the walls and that feel that oozes blues that you don't get in a lot of places.

I love those places; I love playing those places.

It probably held 200 people, maybe... bar, dance floor about the size of this area here, you know.

In fact, Mel Waiters did a song, and he was sayin' he can't understand how them people get on that little floor to dance.

He would say, "The smaller the club, the bigger the party."

In South Carolina, where I grew up, we called 'em honky-tonks, but they would be nightclubs.

Or in the West, they'd call 'em casinos, saloons.

It's basically your littl tavern on the side of the road.

Up North, they'd call 'em taverns.

It's pretty well a local place where everybody comes to hang out and maybe have a cold one and dance and listen to music.

♪ I don't want to talk about it.

♪♪ (male speaker) I've been to honky-tonks from here to New York, Florida, Texas.

I've seen just about all of 'em, and all are about the same.

Still smell smoke from the night before, and you can still smell the... the funky beer that's been dropped all over the place.

Half the time, it's not cleaned up really well.

(Hawkins) In the old honky-tonks, usually what was played was blues or country... in the South, anyway.

In most small towns, there was just one.

There was just one bar, one club.

That was the honky-tonk, and you went there.

That's really where the town came together... to either fight or make love or whatever.

That's where everybody met.

You know, you had the, the... like a Wild West atmosphere almost.

Some nights, everything would be great.

Other nights... you may get shot.

The honky-tonk would shut down for a while.

Then they'd open it back up, and everybody'd be fine again.

♪ [country-rock] (male speaker) You had your hardworking adults, blue collar.

That was their way of releasing stress from workin' hard all week.

You know, people-- where I come from, these were people that worked in the fields.

(Green) You're gonna have... "Mr.

Sharp" come in.

You know, he's got his hat, and he may even have his cane.

You're gonna see "Mama"... Mama gonna be sharp.

You always got a sharp pop and a sharp mama.

(Hawkins) They're wild.

They get wild, I think, maybe 'cause they work hard all week and they got to cut loose.

Maybe there aren't as many, uh...ways to get-- to let off steam in the smaller areas perhaps, but they get crazy.

They get wild.

♪ Give me one more chance to keep you satisfied.

♪♪ (Taylor) It's just a way of life for some of these people, whether it's born or bred into 'em or whatever.

But it's the same people.

We'd play at some places, and we wouldn't go back for two or three years later.

And the same durn people would, you know, "Hey, Don!

Hey!

It's good to see you!

Where you been?"

The worst thing happened one night.

I got in town, in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the club was packed.

I said, "Man, we gonna get paid."

And the DJ said, "Lend me $100; I'll pay you back tonight."

I lent him $100.

The show was over, I'm waiting on him, and the guy came in and said, "I'm getting ready to close up."

The DJ was gone, man.

We were in-- I don't know where it was-- somewhere in a little town in Arkansas.

And they had a club, but it was outside of the city limits and located in a cotton field.

And I remember it was really dim and dark in the club, but people would just be comin from miles around to come to the club.

But we were on the stage, and all of a sudden, we hear, "Pow!

Pow!

Pow!

Pow!"

[chuckling] And we think somebody's shootin', so we duck.

But somebody had played a trick on a lady in the ladies room and had thrown some firecrackers in the ladies room.

So I go in there, and it's like "The Blues Brothers."

There is a chicken wire cage around the stage, and I'm in there.

There's Dale Earnhardt signs everywhere and all this, and everybody in there looked, you know, like rough people.

It was like, I guess, a biker place.

And, um...and all these beautiful women in there, older, beautiful women, and all these rough guys.

Anyhow, I started singing, and about half the crowd pulled out guns.

There are women that are damn near naked.

I'm like, "Where was she hiding a gun?"

We were in Mount Pleasant, Texas, and I was singing "I Made It" by the Canton Spirituals.

When I started the song, this big fight broke out in there, and I'm like, "Come on, Jesus."

When the fight break out in the club, you can hear it.

But when the motion starts and the crowd is coming toward you, how do you keep saying, [singing a cappella] "I look down the line"?

You have to move down the line!

♪ It ain't nothin' but a small frame house ♪ ♪ on an acre lot.

♪♪ ♪ (Tippin, voice-over) First honky-tonk I played in was, uh... George's Place, up in Greenville, South Carolina.

We were just tryin' to get out and play a gig.

We'd play for almost nothin'.

If you'd give us free beer, we'd play for you!

It was a good testing ground 'cause it wasn't a big club.

It gave me time to get my feet wet and start trying to learn how to entertain people.

That's where you, if you're gonna be a good entertainer, you learn to be an entertainer.

It's tryin' to get somebody who's not there to listen-- you're there so they find a girl and dance.

So for you to entertain those people, it's not easy to do.

You got to always be coming up with unique things to do, unique ways to do songs just to keep people interested.

That helps form the character of the entertainer.

(male speaker) I go back to the juke joints to keep myself rooted.

I still play some small venues just on GP.

It's not about the money.

Just like B.B.

King, he goes back to Mississippi and plays this joint that will hold 200 people.

This is a $100,000-a-night man.

It's not about the money all the time.

It's about where you come from and giving back.

♪ [bluegrass tune] ♪ ♪ (narrator) Bluegrass music, mountain music, pickin' parlor music... a true form of Southern music if there ever was one.

Made famous across the country by Bill Monroe, this early form of country music is identified by the twang of the banjo.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (Taylor) To use a food analogy, it's a stew pot of all sorts of traditions that have come from lots of different places.

And, you know, a lot of it, um... came into the state initially with the migration from Virginia and North Carolina and down through the Appalachians.

So one major influence early on was the Scotch-Irish influx up in the Upstate.

That wouldn't have been bluegrass, contrary to popular belief.

It would have been string band music, fiddle music, square dance or buck dance type music, party music, you know, that was kind of mixed with African-American influences, with blues and early jazz.

But the instrumentation was real important.

The fiddle, obviously, is a European instrument.

It came from the British Isles, and that was real influential in the Upstate, and it worked its way down.

But the banjo is an African instrument.

So you kind of have a blending there of two different traditions.

Bluegrass music, people know it when they hear it.

But when you pin them down and say, "Exactly what is it?"

sometimes it's difficult.

One definition is the classic way arranged by Bill Monroe.

He was considered to be the father of bluegrass music.

What he did was he identified traditional music that he heard growing up-- heard in church and heard all around him-- picked it out, and gave it a new life.

♪ [bluegrass music] And it was a banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, and bass.

That was the basic arrangement, acoustic instruments, and the other part is singing that's usually harmony, sort of like the singing you do in church, often three-, four-part harmony, with the traditional sort of arrangements.

♪ ♪ I like all kinds of music... a little gospel, a little blues, a little jazz, a little folk, a little country all rolled into one.

The main group I play with is Bill Wells and the Blue Ridge Mountain Grass.

That's a very traditional group.

I also play with Flat Out Strangers, where anything pretty much goes.

♪ [audience cheering and applauding] ♪ Put it into gear and started backin' up.

♪ ♪ ♪ Tried every way to get it going forward.

♪♪ (voice-over) There wasn't much bluegrass here whenever I first came down.

There was a couple of places that was having little get-togethers but playing more country music than they were bluegrass, but using acoustic instruments, or some acoustic instruments.

I decided I wanted to.. to keep bluegrass pure, the way it originally started with Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and all of them, and so that's how I come to set up my shop and music hall and everything.

We're total acoustic instruments, nothing except acoustic instruments.

No plug-ins, no electrics of any kind.

Always, in the back of mind, from as long as I could remember, I always wanted a place where musicians could come in and sit around and pick together and just sort of fellowship.

♪ [bluegrass music] It's what most people describe as a feel-good music, so I think that's one of the reasons they enjoy-- after a long day of stress and everything, they can come in, and they can sit back and enjoy some good music without having their heads banged and everything with a lot of loud noises and everything.

It's just a good... it's a good... a good-feeling music.

Next up, we've got Mr.

Van Price.

He's going to play fiddle.

(voice-over) Most of the people that played it from this area-- a famous man lived in Columbia for many years.

His name was Snuffy Jenkins.

He was the first man that played the five-string banjo in a syncopated three-finger style on the air.

Snuffy came down here in 1937, and they started playing on WIS.

And that probably was, if you will, the birth of this style music in the state of South Carolina, whereby a great number of people were exposed to it.

(Taylor) Snuffy Jenkins and Pappy Sherrill, their contributions can't be.. you know, overstated.

They were... some of the earliest that played what was called the Kerosene Circuit.

And it's kind of the... the white string-band version of a juke joint, kind of a honky-tonk.

They would play little out-of-the-way places, little... school auditoriums, places that were lit by kerosene lamp, hence the name Kerosene Circuit.

They didn't get any money, just like the fellows playing juke joints.

They might have gotten food or a drink or something.

So it wasn't an easy life, but these guys loved the music.

This is an actual radio log from WIS radio station from 1955.

And this is a radio log from, um...the radio of their first appearance.

Snuffy originally played for the first time with a fiddle player called J.E.

Mainer.

He was North Carolina-based.

This is the log of the date of their first appearance, April 12, 1937.

When you look up the history of the banjo, one of the first men that you're gonna see is South Carolina's own Snuffy Jenkins.

I have to be very careful with it, but when you open the program up-- and this was very unique to the Southeast, and it's so important because Crazy Water Crystals was a patent medicine company and one of the first companies that ever sponsored country music on the radio.

You open this booklet, and right here is Snuffy Jenkins, and right here is Pappy Sherrill.

Over here I've got an LP which is considered to be one of the first bluegrass LPs that came out, in 1957.

When you think about it, that was not a very long time ago.

One of South Carolina's most important festivals is, of course, Myrtle Beach, which most of you have heard of.

It's now in its 37th year.

I was at the very first one that was held in 1971, and here's my proof.

Here's my ticket from 1971.

This is an actual flyer from that first festival.

And this is the actual program from that first festival.

♪ [bluegrass music] (Klein) For a long time, bluegrass fell into the country sphere.

It wasn't that much different from what people were doing that were called country.

They might use a mandolin and guitar or a banjo or a fiddle.

So the instrumentation was similar.

Over time, what we think of as country got more electrified, added electric instruments, added pedal steel and drums, things that are not played in bluegrass.

Hank Williams and Elvis Presley did a huge amount to draw people away from acoustic sounds and excite 'em with the electric sounds and the heavier drive and louder volumes of those other kinds of music.

Some people would still say they're one and the same.

Others would say bluegrass is something different.

It may be a more traditional form of country, but to me it's really evolved along a separate path.

♪ ♪ If I told you ♪ ♪ just how good you looked ♪ ♪ as you buttoned up your jeans, ♪ ♪ you'd never understood.

♪ ♪ You would have hung around ♪ ♪ and fell in love, ♪ ♪ tried to tie me down and then run around, ♪ ♪ so just go have your fun... ♪ (narrator) Hear that twang?

Now, that's Southern.

Whether it's Southwest or Deep South, country music is as Southern as grits and gravy, and honky-tonks were and still are the proving grounds for this American art form.

♪ ...cold beer in a crowded rowdy bar, ♪ ♪ not a house full of in-laws ♪ ♪ askin' what my intentions are.

♪ ♪ Drink up your every dime, ♪ ♪ and live up your lifetime.

♪ ♪ Sit here and abuse it ♪ ♪ with good country music.

♪ ♪ Hank Williams proved it ♪ ♪ with good country music.

♪♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [country music] (Taylor) If you looked at country musicians today, most of 'em aren't from the Deep South.

They're from the fringe of the Deep South... you know, Oklahoma, that region of the country.

That alone kind of tells you how deeply rooted this music is in the South and that it influenced so much and it spread.

Western swing was real popular out in Texas and Oklahoma, but a lot of the musical forms that make up western swing have Deep South roots... you know, blues, jazz, early country.

♪ I'm a honky-tonk superman.

♪ ♪ Ready or not... ♪♪ (voice-over) I started out in bluegrass, but you couldn't get a job in a honky-tonk playing bluegrass, so we went to country.

I was already a country fan, but we started playing country.

It led to me moving to Nashville.

My first single, "You Got to Stand for Something," set the precedent for what my career would be like for the next 16 years.

It's just songs and stories about people and their lives and how to make somebody... think about themselves or feel good about themselves, and that's kind of my approach to writing.

I'm not sure what makes honky-tonkers keep on honky-tonking, but I can tell you this.

If I wasn't in Nashville and traveling this country, getting a chance to do music, I'd still be in the honky-tonks.

There are many nights when something is really going sideways-- not the music, but the business-- and I beg for the chance I could be at the clubs where I used to play and just say, "Here's one from George Strait," and tear down on it and just enjoy that moment, because it's very special.

It's really cool to get off stage and, instead of walking into strangers, sit with people you've known most of your life, and they're enjoying you for who you are.

That's pretty cool.

(Hawkins) Let's try it one more time.

♪ (backup singers) ♪ Well... ♪ (Hawkins) ♪ Hard liquor, ♪ ♪ fried chicken, and you... ♪♪ (voice-over) I was raised in small towns in North and South Carolina, and, um... I grew up watching "Hee Haw" and wrestlin', and folks always had Johnny Cash playing or Roy Orbison and stuff like that.

And everybody played music.

On weekends, everyone would get together and do a fish fry and have a big bluegrass festival on the porch.

And so as a kid watching that-- music was a part of everybody, so I just started singing songs.

As I got older, I learned to write songs.

♪ ...just long enough to sell my soul, ♪ ♪ chasin' every kind of rainbow... ♪♪ (voice-over) My style inspiration, as far as how I learned to write, probably comes from a lot of that, people that wrote in a very descriptive fashion, like the old blues guys or like Hank Williams really wrote.

He didn't leave you guessing on anything.

Everything was laid right out there.

There's a... I guess sort of a punk rock mentality with it, but still it's more of a... old country, and the older I get, there's more blues thrown in there just because blues and country-- and bein' Southern-- has so much to do with that.

Every rock 'n' roll song is about something you want to do or that you pretend you're doing, like a rap song or whatever.

But blues and country, which are the basis of Southern music, which is the basis of rock, are about real lif and what happened to you today.

If you're somebody with the propensity to write songs or play music, you have to do it because that's the one thing that keeps you from putting a gun to your head.

I mean, that's really... seriously, I mean, that sounds morbid, but, you know, breaking it down, that's why.

If I couldn't sing, if I couldn't write a song, there'd be no outlet.

I would either do myself in, or I'd be in jail.

I think that's probably where the best music comes from, is you... you have to do it.

And a lot of days, I wish that I had some other kind of talent, that I had a talent to be a banker or a lawyer or something, because it.... But you write about the pain, the happiness, and then it's out there, and you share it.

Then you see that, Hey, whether I make any money or not, that's the reason I'm here.

People need to know the stuff I've gone through 'cause they've been through the same thing.

Then they can, Hey, that guy has been the same places I've been, that guy understands what's going on in my life.

♪ Oh, Lord, have mercy, ♪ ♪ I'm a country guitar pickin' man, ♪ ♪ a country guitar pickin' man.

♪ ♪ I'm a country guitar pickin' man.

♪♪ ♪ (female speaker) The Skyline started during World War II.

This was the old air force base, where we're located, and they tell me that it started off as an officers club, and then it gradually became public when the air force base moved.

When we first started in '85, we had a couple of square dances.

We had a caller.

We had square dances every Friday and Saturday night.

They expected it.

Country music used to be all country.

Now it's not.

The urban cowboy scene came in.

It changed a lot.

(male speaker) The Bowery is here since 1944.

We're celebrating our 63rd season here at Myrtle Beach.

It's one of the only original country honky-tonks around.

We're just a draft beer joint.

We play country music.

It's basically an opry house.

The band plays to the people.

We entertain the people till the time they go.

In '73, Alabama started here as the house band.

What they did was they got to practice, sharpen their pencil a little bit.

They learned how to entertain.

They were good musicians and good writers, but they learned from the Bowery how to communicate with the customers.

(male speaker) When I first came, I thought I had played in redneck honky-tonks, but not till I came here.

I've grown a lot as a person in the past 2 1/2 years from all the diverse people you meet.

It works your heart.

We're here five, six hours a night, six nights a week, and five of those, I'm singing.

You have no choice but to practice and get better.

Even if you don't practice during the day, you can't help but get better and get better at relating with people and talking to 'em, which is something I had never done.

The bigger clubs are great, a good chance to practice your stage presence.

But when it comes down to it, they only really want to hear what they can dance to in line dancing, and you don't get as much true feedback.

They may clap because they had a good time and not even know what song you played.

But here, we even get requests for originals.

It's good to know that people pay attention.

It's about old music, like the old western country music, and we still do it.

I love playing for these people.

I've been doing it for 20 years, and I love doing it.

Anywhere or any chance I can have to do it, this much, and have people actually pay attention, I would.

The nice thing about here is that there's no room to dance.

You have no choice but listen.

They don't come for any other reason, I don't think they come for the beer.

(Shamah) There's not too many country music clubs anymore.

There might be an opry house here and there-- Calvin Gilmore's or Dolly Parton or the Alabama Theatre-- but there's not really an old-fashioned honky-tonk where they can communicate, stomp their foot, have a few drinks, and get loose.

The music!

It makes you want to... jump!

♪ ♪ ♪ (narrator) Everybody's got a soul, and everyone gets the blues.

Born on Southern plantations, raised through the Great Depression, and reaching maturity through the civil rights movement, soul and blues music are at the foundatio of contemporary American music.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (Taylor) Obviously, blues is based in the-- as Deep South as you can get.

You can't get any deeper than the Mississippi Delta, and that's a musical expression that took root in Chicago.

You know, there are all sorts of blues styles now, and all this music has roots in the turn-of-the-century South.

( Belt) Blues came out of the cotton fields of the Mississippi deltas and stuff because that's the only relief that black people had during those days.

When you're out there in the hot sun sweatin', carrying a 100-pound sack of cotton and pickin' cotton, you'd have a song going, and it'd help you get through the day.

(male speaker) Down in Bishopville, we had something you called the wire circuit.

♪ Nobody but a guitar player back in the corner there.

♪ Well, I'm going away, Mama.

♪ ♪ Lord, I won't be back till the fall.

♪ ♪ ♪ Lord, I'm gonna leave, ♪ ♪ and I won't be back till fall.

♪ ♪ ♪ And if I meet me a good woman, Lord, ♪ ♪ I won't be back at all.

♪♪ ♪ A lot of people call me a blues player.

Some call me a gospel player.

I was born in Bishopville, South Carolina, in 1933, in Lee County where the Lizard Man used to be.

I caught the first thing coming through that would get a guy out of town.

We formed a gospel group, the Spiritual Airs, from Columbia, South Carolina.

Charles Derrick was the manager, a longtime DJ.

I was still playing a little blues on the weekends at house parties, me and the guitar.

On Sunday, I played in church, played the gospel.

Like I tell people, I came up doing both of 'em, the blues and gospel.

Real gospel and real blues is first cousins.

They're gifted.

Now, you can be trained to be a musician and become real skilled at it, and you can be born a musician and become more skilled, but if you've got a gift to play music and then can go get some help, that's where the genius come out.

I try to play for the people, not to the people.

You play to 'em, that's a presentation too.

For 'em-- both of them presentations, but one of 'em carries a little different weight.

Sometimes things good to you, but ain't good for you.

Sometimes things good for you, but ain't good to you.

But when you're playin' live, play for them.

Like I try to tell people, everybody got the blues.

Take my philosophy.

Everybody got the blues.

Rich man got the blues because you tryin' to keep money.

Poor man got the blues 'cause you tryin' to get money.

I got the blues 'cause I ain't got no money.

♪ ♪ ♪ (Belt) I just grew up playin' the blues, man.

The blues, you know-- I guess I'm abnormal according to most musicians.

Most musicians grew up in church.

I was raised in the sanctified church, the Church of God in Christ.

My mama was filled with the Holy Ghost, with burning fire.

You know, we didn't have a lot of instruments in our church.

Y.Z.

and my brother Melwin, they had a band called Y.Z.

Ealey and the Merrymakers.

I was just a child, and Y.Z.

taught me to play a few things on the guitar.

I used to watch them rehearse, and I learned their whole show.

Their bass player ran out on them, and I knew the show, so they hired me, at 13 years old, to play bass for them.

And after that, I formed some groups.

I would get together with some band members.

Band members like to play.

They all play, and somebody have to sing, 'cause people don't want to hear music all night long, you know.

You got to rock the house, so I started singing, man.

So anyway... that's how I became a guitar player/singer.

I just never... I just never lost sight of the fact that... that you can live a dream if you want to.

(male speaker) Somebody give it up for Malaco recording artist Mr.

Mellllll.... Waiters!

♪ [cheering] ♪ Mel... Mr.

Mel... ♪ ♪ ♪ (male speaker) Everything really began in church.

My first little gospel song was "Yes, Jesus loves me.

Yes, I know, for the Bible tells me so."

I had the big part down the center of my head, my suit on with my high-water pants, and I was the loudest thing in the choir.

My grammy took me there.

I was always a drummer in a local band.

I played drums from the beginning.

I got my first drum set when I was seven years old.

Grandma and them gave it to me.

When I got up Christmas morning at 7, I was playing it.

By 12 noon, they put it back in the box 'cause I was making that much noise.

Johnny, Tyrone, B.B., Z.Z, Little Milton... those guys really sang the blues.

My tones are very, very far from being a blues artist.

The kind of production that I do is really R & B, but my lyrics are blues-related.

So everyone can really identify to my lyrics, but the beat is so contemporary to where mainstream radio can play it.

That was a true blessing, what happened to me.

We got "Hole in the Wall" to mainstream radio.

Sing it for me, y'all.

(audience) ♪ Hole in the wall!

♪ ♪ I've had my best time, y'all.... ♪♪ (voice-over) It was so astonishing to see the response of that crowd out there this evening.

I'm really feeling my, my, my... my place in this arena, in this genre of music.

I'm really finding my place.

I used to be ashamed of the kind of music I wrote and some of the ways I sung, but now I can do and sing like Mel Waiters.

I'm not Luther, you know, but I can hold my tune in the bucket.

I have a style of music that everybody is pretty much adapting to it.

♪ ...at the hole in the wall.

♪♪ My grandfather was a minister, and I would never join the choir.

When I hear him start, I want to be close enough to the back that I can sneak out.

♪ [crowd cheering] So I was determined I'm not going to sing in the choir, and I'm not coming out of this yard where the church is until I hear him winding it up.

[humming emphatically] Uh-oh, time to go back in, ease back in, you know.

But no, no... never was in the choir.

Didn't come out of the choir.

Didn't do the gospel thing.

I sing about life, you know, just what is going on, and I always stuck with relationships, and relationships are the same no matter what color you are, no matter... what size you are.

You know, it's all the same.

[mock sobbing] You got a boyfriend and broke up.

You got married... he cheated.

It's all the same.

♪ ♪ Got nowhere to turn.

♪ ♪ I'm tired of being alone.

♪ ♪ I feel like breaking up somebody's home!

♪♪ It was funny 'cause we used to spend all of the fruit-picking season in Florida.

Every hole-in-the-wall in Florida where anybody was pickin' anything, we were up in there.

[laughing] It was big fun, you know.

We was in our little station wagon attached to the-- with the U-Haul in the back, gettin' down.

For some reason, black people don't-- they have a stigma about the blues.

They don't want to like the blues.

B.B.

King would starve to death if it wasn't for white people.

White people like the blues, but black people say "nah."

So the people that they like, like me or Betty Wright, they'll classify us as blues just so they can say they like the blues, but we're not blues singers.

The blues singers are the Bobby Blands and the B.B.

Kings, Bobby Rush, Buddy Guy.

These are blues singers.

♪ (Walker) Mac's on Main was started because I wanted a venue where young musicians can come and cut their teeth on a real stage and play with real musicians, professionals, and learn how to play their instruments in front of a live audience performin' some stuff.

(Castiglia) When I was first playing, I was into rock music, and I listened to a lot of Hendrix and Dylan.

And then, by luck, I stumbled over blues.

I was never exposed to it as a child.

My parents never listened to it.

My father was a doo-wopper.

My mother was into country music.

I was never exposed to blues.

I got to tour with Junior Wells and learned a lot from him.

He did every-- you know, blues is very vast.

It's--there's so many different versions of it.

There's Chicago blues, and there's blues from the Delta, and the Johnnie Taylor, Malaco blues.

There's the soul blues.

All of it has touched me, and all of it has influenced me.

Whatever comes out comes out to me, you know.

It all started in the South.

Without the South, there would be no blues.

You know, it started in the South, and then the migration North, and it became more city, more street, you know, and the orchestration changed from the, uh, you know, the... the one man and his guitar.

It turned into ensemble pieces once it went up North, and then it came back, and they brought the street back to the country.

The South is the beginning to me.

The blues is really tough.

It's not really mainstream, and I know that.

If it goes further, if it keeps going further and further, and I can get it out to more people, that's great, but I know what I'm getting into with this.

It's a tough life; it's not easy.

There's no delusions of grandeur here.

Play as many places as I can and take it as far as I can.

The blues music came from the African-American experience.

Our gift to the world was blues.

I went to England, and they thought I was the best thing since sliced bread because I could play guitar, I'm black.

I was just Fatback from Mac's on Main.

That's all it was.

They were able to hone in and say, This must be a good blues man because he's from America and he plays guitar.

So they relate that to our culture.

It's our gift to the world, blues and jazz, which is what it was.

That genre of music stands the test of time.

♪ Ain't too proud to plead, baby, baby.

♪♪ ♪ He's a little red rooster... ♪ ♪ ♪ too lazy to crow... ♪ ♪ for day.

♪♪ (narrator) Music making is an activity in which all races can mix without anyone raising an eyebrow.

In the South especially, music was instrumental in tearing down racial barriers.

Musicians, for the most part, have always been more concerne with music than race.

Music is something that crosses racial lines, a lot like food does.

A modern example I can give you is Freddie Vanderford from Union County.

He grew up playing with Peg Leg Sam and with Pink Anderson in Spartanburg, and he's a white fellow that can play the harmonica like... you've never heard.

People from the South... had a unique experience.

Number one, the races were always banded together, whether they liked it or didn't like it, because we were dependent on each other for survival.

But the influences of music-- like, you listen to country and western music-- the same lyrical... content.

They're talking about lost loves, loves gone bad, and wonderful loves.

But that's why the music is so interchangeable.

(Wells) Bluegrass... Bill Monroe described it as, bluegrass is a combination of, uh...of, uh... folk music... jazz... gospel, and country music, all sort of mixed together.

I listened to country and western radio because that's what we had.

We only had one radio station, which was WLAC out of Nashville, Tennessee, that played some black music, which was late at night, 12:00 at night.

Other than that, all during the day, I had, like, Webb Pierce.

I had Hank Snow.

I had-- you name it, just all of those singers, you know, that first inspired me to sing.

There probably wouldn't be... the good music that we know of if not for, especially, the people that came up in Georgia and South Carolina.

I mean, Little Richard, James Brown... the bluegrass that came from there, the blues.

I mean, really, the Carolinas and Georgia probably had more different types of music going on in the early stages of popular music.

♪ ♪ Send him on home.

♪♪ Barbara Mandrell did "If Loving You Is Wrong I Don't Wanna Be Right," and so did I. And Luther Ingram wrote it.

I think her's sold more than both of ours.

Well, anyway.

[laughing] I think that in the South the kinds of things that these artists were doing with their music, people could readily identify, and identity has a great deal to do-- particularly if you're telling a story, if the beat of the music and other things are there, these are things people were familiar with.

I think Southern music is the foundation of music in this country.

I really do.

As I was just saying, Jimmie Rodgers is my hero in country music.

His music was the white man blues, and it came from the black man blues.

That's where country music got its roots.

And it started talkin' about the working man and the average class person.

I call it "the real people."

Southern music has really been a major influence on the music that's now played in this country, absolutely.

Now...the country blues.

♪ ♪ Well, I want a little baby that won't hurt me.

♪ ♪ Anytime I see one I want, I cry.

♪ ♪ That's "Saturday Night."

I got one you call "Rag Mama."

It's ragtime.

♪ ["Rag, Mama, Rag"] ♪ Rag... ♪ ♪ rag, baby.

♪ ♪ Oh, rag.

♪ ♪ Do that rag.

♪ ♪ ♪ Love and glory, ♪ ♪ hallelujah.

♪ ♪ I lay my... ♪ ♪ burden down.

♪♪ ♪ It's uptime.

♪ Every day... ♪ ♪ every day, I got the blues.

♪ ♪ Every day... ♪ ♪ every day, I got the blues.

♪ ♪ ♪ See me worry.

♪ ♪ You I hate to lose.

♪♪ That the uptown blues.