Barbecue's "Golden Secret"

Melvin's  barbecue sandwich topped with the "golden secret" sauce. (Photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus) 

Bessinger, certainly the most famous surname in South Carolina barbecue. Mustard sauce, Piggy Park. Icons of South Carolina history and culture and Bessinger family inventions.

One of fourteen children born to Mack Bessinger, restaurant patriarch Joseph Jacob, was known as ‘Big Joe.’ He moved from the family farm near Orangeburg to open the Holly Hill Café in 1939. There, together with the Sweatman family, he concocted a mustard-based barbecue sauce, owning to their shared German roots. That “Golden Secret,” as the Bessingers call it, became the state’s signature sauce.

Melvin Bessinger, like most of his ten siblings, followed his father into the barbecue business. In 1961, with another brother, Melvin opened his first barbecue restaurant in west Charleston. Three decades later, Melvin split off to found his own barbecue joint. Today, third-generation barbecue entrepreneur, David Bessinger, maintains the Bessinger family tradition.

— Rien Fertel/ The Barbecue Bus

Melvin’s Legendary Bar-B-Q
538 Folly Road
Charleston, SC 29412
(843) 762-0511

Thanksgiving Every Day of the Week

A sampling of the fare from the Brown's Bar-B-Q buffet in Kingstree, South Carolina. (photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

Thomas M. Brown, Jr. is a farmer. He plants soy, wheat, hay, and oats to sell on the market. Additionally, he grows corn, squash, zucchini, and broccoli, okra, butter beans, collards, and cabbage for his restaurant’s massive buffet line. At Brown’s Bar-B-Q, these fresh vegetables are served in season alongside pilau rice and white rice, macaroni, yams, barbecue chicken and fried chicken, barbecue turkey and baked turkey, barbecue ribs, smoked ham, potato salad, coleslaw, and, yes, chopped barbecue.   

A motorcycle accident left a teenage Thomas Brown with a broken leg. Confined to bed and with a hot plate set up within reach, he learned to cook for himself. In 1981, he started serving takeout plates—rice and gravy, yams, barbecue—from a window on the family farm. A decade later, he built the dining room, as large as the buffet table is long.

At Brown’s Bar-B-Q, dinner, or lunch, is like Thanksgiving eating enjoyed every day of the week. The fresh vegetables, the variety of meats; all the desserts that can’t fit on one plate. It’s hard to keep track of all the gravies.

— Rien Fertel/ The Barbecue Bus

Brown’s Bar-B-Q

809 Williamsburg County Highway  

Kingstree, SC 29556

(843) 382-2753

Rust Gravy in Orangeburg

Barbecue pork covered with Dukes' rust-colored sauce with slaw, crisp skin, and rust colored hash over rice. (Photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

At least a dozen barbecue establishments, covering nearly two-thirds of the State’s geography, operate under the Dukes name. Most South Carolinians across the Midlands and Lowlands claim a favorite. So, ask a local for directions to Dukes Bar-B-Que and you’re hazarding a geographic mixup.  

Earl Duke founded the original Dukes Bar-B-Que along Whitman Street in downtown Orangeburg. From their the dukedom spread, with family members and others opening locations. The first Dukes eventually passed to Harold Kittrell, formerly a carpenter, and then onto his son, Tony, the present manager/co-owner.

Dukes Bar-B-Que (note, never spelled Duke’s) still stocks a loaded buffet line with sides—green beans, baked beans, macaroni and cheese, slaw, potato salad, pickles, and bread—and the heavy hitters: rice, hash, barbecue chicken, fried chicken, and, of course, chopped shoulder and ham barbecue pork. The standout remains Earl Dukes’ sauce recipe: sweet, ketchup-based, thicker then most, and orange-yellow tinged, giving it a color and viscosity Tony Kittrell deems “rust gravy.”

— Rien Fertel/ The Barbecue Bus

Dukes Bar-B-Que

1298 Whitman Street Southeast

Orangeburg, SC 29115

(803) 534-2916

Politics in the Pits

Smoke billows from the pits at Jackie Hite's Bar-B-Q. (Photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

Since 1966, James Lee “Jackie” Hite has served as the Fire Chief, Water Commissioner, a City Councilman, Magistrate, and Mayor (three terms) of Leesville, South Carolina. He also smokes barbecue. Thus he serves his people two ways, through politics and pork; “Once you been there,” Hite says “you can't get it out of your blood.”

He opened Jackie Hite’s Bar-B-Q, across the railroad tracks from town, in May 1979. He learned the trade from his father, a plumber, fisherman, and part-time barbecue man. During the annual Firemen’s Balls, while the people square danced in the streets, little Jackie would help his father with the hog smoking, staying up all night, watching, waiting, and doing what he was told. Today, the pigs are still hickory-smoked, the sauce, mustard and vinegar and pepper. 

He is 72 years old and underwent open heart surgery five years ago; his constituents are begging him to run for mayor again. He just might. As long as he doesn’t quit cooking barbecue.

— Rien Fertel/ The Barbecue Bus

Jackie Hite’s Bar-B-Q

460 East Railroad Avenue

Batesburg-Leesville, SC 29006

(803) 532-3354

Hash and Chicken Stew Capital of the World.

Sawdust covers the floor around the dining tables at Midway BBQ in Buffalo, South Carolina. (Photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

                
811 Hash Boulevard. If that ain’t the the actual address of Buffalo, South Carolina’s Midway BBQ, it might as well be. Established some time around 1941—the date is sketchy—founder Jack O’Dell was once one of nearly 50 Union County hash houses hurrying out the slow-cooked beef, butter, onion, salt and pepper stew. Today Midway BBQ is the only one remaining. 

Growing up in his family’s grocery, the future Hash King first garnered attention as a crackerjack cattle and hog grader and buyer. “When Jack O’Dell walked in the barn,” recounts son-in-law Jay Allen, Midway’s manager since 1994, “you knew the best cows and hogs were going home with him because he only bought the best.” Though O’Dell has long retired, livestock purchases continue to stock Midway’s full-service meat counter (in old-school butcher shop fashion, sawdust still covers the floor), emerge as the hickory-smoked shoulder and ham barbecue, and fill the three 100 gallon hash pots.  

“Without hash,” declares “barbecue science engineer” Allen, “we’re done. We’re closed.” Allen, husband of O’Dell’s daughter Amy, Midway’s present owner, says that though “BBQ” styles the business’s signage, the name should read Midway Hash (it should be noted that they also sell a hundred gallons a day of their superb creamy, spicy chicken stew on rainy days). Then naturally, when people ask where to find Midway BBQ, O’Dell responds: “811 Hash Boulevard.”

— Rien Fertel/ The Barbecue Bus

Midway BBQ
811 Main Street

Buffalo, SC 29321

(864) 427-4047

Learning from Mom: Levern Darby

Levern Darby at Cooper's Country Store, Salters, South Carolina. (photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

Women remain a rarity in professional barbecuedom, especially in the realm of whole-hog cookery. But Levern Darby learned from his mother, Naomi, who slaughtered hogs and sold the oak-smoked barbecue from the trunk of her car, outside of what would later be named Cooper's Country Store in Salters, SC. Darby has now worked at the Store going on 36 years. There he watches that the hogs are cooked right, the way Mom taught him.

Audio and Text by Rien Fertel
Click the play button below to listen to Levern. 

Levern Darby works in the kitchen at Cooper's Country Store, Salters, South Carolina. (photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

Barbecue cooked by Levern Darby at Cooper's Country Store, Salters, South Carolina. (photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

The Cracklin' Sound: 'Little Joe' Brunson

Little Joe Brunson removes a piece of crispy pork skin from the pit at Sweatman's Bar-B-Que. (photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

Little Joe Brunson at Sweatman's Bar-B-Que. (photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

After taking the whole hogs off the pits at Sweatman's Bar-B-Que in Holly Hill, South Carolina, Jonathan 'Little Joe' Brunson smokes the remaining pork skins over oak and hickory coals to make what may be the South's most perfect cracklin'. Working at this barbecue institution for over thirty years, Little Joe can determine when the cracklins are done just by their sizzle.

Click the SoundCloud box below to hear Little Joe.

Audio editing and text by Rien Fertel/ The Barbecue Bus
 

Little Joe Brunson gathers a shovelful of wood coals for the pit. (photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

Put Temmerath: Midway BBQ's Secret Weapon

Put Temmerath at Midway BBQ in Buffalo, South Carolina. (photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

Put Temmerath, originally from Laos, has worked at Midway BBQ in Buffalo, SC for nearly sixteen years. His old friend, Midway manager Jay Allen, hired him to be the kitchen's jack of all trades. Put oversees the making of 100-gallon pots of hash, the prepping of smoked barbecue shoulders, and many of the restaurant's vegetable sides. Allen brags, "There's no eighteen or twenty-year-old here that can keep up with him." 

Click below to listen to Rien Fertel's interview with Put.

Daily Specials as Community Service

Jay Allen on the phone with radio personality Mike Stevens, Tuesday at Midway BBQ. Photo by Denny Culbert

Each morning at 11:05, "Barbecue Science Engineer" Jay Allen of Midway BBQ in Buffalo, SC reads the daily specials to radio personality Mike Stevens of WBCU 1460 AM and 103.5 FM. Union County citizens tune in to hear about the restaurant meets butcher's meat-and-three and cuts of the day. Listen to a warmup clip from June 12, 2002.

Click the Broadcastr link below to listen to the daily specials.
Audio recording and editing by Rien Fertel

On the Road Again: The South Carolina BBQ Trail.

Bum's Restaurant, Ayden, NC. Photo by Denny Culbert.

On Sunday, The Barbecue Bus (Denny Culbert and Rien Fertel) hit the road again to gather oral histories and photos for the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA) and the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture. This trip: We document the pitmasters and barbecue institutions that are historically and socially significant to South Carolina’s culinary culture.

Our BBQ Trail itinerary will carry us through Upstate, the Lowlands, and Midlands of South Carolina. We’ll cover barbecue houses in all four of South Carolina’s sauce-varietal regions, from the mustard belt that extends through the State’s center toward Charleston, to the peppery vinegar country of the north-east coast, to the western tomato-based hinterlands. Additionally, we’ll explore the State’s diverse barbecue accoutrements, including hash, chicken stew, vegetable side-dishes, and desserts.

We’ll post interviews, photographs, and profiles here on The Barbecue Bus blog. More frequent updates from the road can be found @TheBarbecueBus. At the culmination of the trip, the oral histories will be added to the SFA’s online Southern BBQ Trail. The SFA’s oral history program, led by Amy Evans, has collected more than 600 oral histories across the South.

Since The Barbecue Bus completed the North Carolina BBQ Trail in November and December of last year, we’ve been very busy. Denny recently worked as the Official Photographer for Lafayette, Louisiana’s twenty-sixth annual Festival International de Louisiane. Rien began writing a column, Past & Repast, for the Oxford American online. Denny and Rien recently collaborated on two articles for The Local Palate magazine, one featuring the Zydeco musician Cedric Watson. And, on March 17th, Denny married his sweetheart Katie Frayard in a surprise garden ceremony, with Rien officiating.

Next week, The Barbecue Bus will assist in guiding the SFA’s (sold out!) High on the Hog Carolina Field Trip through eastern North Carolina. They’ll revisit some of their favorite personalities and pits from the area, including: James Henry Howell, pitmaster, and Samuel Jones, manager, of the Skylight Inn in Ayden; Bum and Larry Dennis of Bum’s Restaurant, also in Ayden; and the “Highly Seasoned Food” from Stephen and Gerri Grady of Grady’s Barbecue in Dudley.

"Highly Seasoned Food."

Stephen & Gerri Grady of Grady's Barbecue, Dudley, NC.

Click to see our original text and photo profile of the Gradys: http://www.thebarbecuebus.com/2011/12/gradys-barbecue-this-day-is-last-this.html

Recorded and cut by Rien Fertel. Shot and chopped by Denny Culbert.

"We Just Didn't Ever Stop."

Bum and Larry Dennis of Bum's Restaurant, Ayden, NC.

Click to see our original text and photo profile of Bum's: http://www.thebarbecuebus.com/2012/03/first-barbecue.html

Recorded and cut by Rien Fertel. Shot and chopped by Denny Culbert.

"Dad Put Barbecue Grease in My Milk Bottle."

Samuel Jones of Skylight Inn, Ayden, NC.

Click to see our original text and photo profile of Skylight Inn: http://www.thebarbecuebus.com/2012/03/standard-bearers-of-barbecue-skylight.html

Recorded and cut by Rien Fertel. Shot and chopped by Denny Culbert.

Bruce and Samuel Jones of Skylight Inn, Ayden, NC.

"It Goes Over Pretty Good."

Randy Russell of Bunn's Barbecue, Windsor, NC.

Click to see our original text and photo profile of Bunn's Barbecue: http://www.thebarbecuebus.com/2012/02/survivalist-cue-bunns-barbecue-windsor.html

Recorded and cut by Rien Fertel. Shot and chopped by Denny Culbert.

"A Taste of the Past."

Tommy Moore of Moore's Olde Tyme Barbeque, New Bern, NC.

Click to see our original text and photo profile of Moore's: http://www.thebarbecuebus.com/2012/01/new-bern-north-caronlinas-king-of-cue.html

Recorded and cut by Rien Fertel. Shot and chopped by Denny Culbert.

"The Right Niche."

Larry & Brandon Pierce of Nahunta Pork Center, Pikeville, NC.

Click here to see our original text and photo profile of Nahunta Pork Center: http://www.thebarbecuebus.com/2011/12/kings-of-pig-nahunta-pork-center.html

Recorded and cut by Rien Fertel. Shot and chopped by Denny Culbert.

"You Just Gotta Know that Smell."

Rudy Cobb of Jack Cobb & Son Barbecue Place, Farmville, NC.

Click here to see our original text and photo profile of Rudy Cobb: http://www.thebarbecuebus.com/2012/01/rudy-cobb-place-is-space.html

Recorded and cut by Rien Fertel. Shot and chopped by Denny Culbert.

Barbecue by Consensus.

William Morris, Jr. of Morris Barbeque, Hookerton, NC.

Click here to see our original text and photo profile of Morris Barbeque: http://www.thebarbecuebus.com/2011/12/saturday-in-pork.html

Recorded and cut by Rien Fertel. Shot and chopped by Denny Culbert.

"Lucky Enough to Be a Part of this Place."

Donald Williams & Kevin Lamm of Parker's Barbecue, Wilson, NC.

Click here to see our original text and photo profile of Parker's Barbecue: http://www.thebarbecuebus.com/2011/11/parkers-barbecue-wilson-nc.html

Recorded and cut by Rien Fertel. Shot and chopped by Denny Culbert. 

"I Gotta Keep It Going."

Debbie Holt of Clyde Cooper's Barbecue, Raleigh, NC

Click here to see our original text and photo profile of this nearly 75-year-old institution: http://www.thebarbecuebus.com/2012/01/defend-barbecue-clyde-coopers-in.html

Recorded and cut by Rien Fertel. Shot and chopped by Denny Culbert.

"Redhead Mama B."

Natalie Ramsey & Chase Webb of Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge, Shelby, NC

Click here to see our original text and photo profile of the sister and brother of barbecue: http://www.thebarbecuebus.com/2012/02/brother-sister-barbecue-red-bridges.html

Recorded and cut by Rien Fertel. Shot and chopped by Denny Culbert.

"Getting your daily fix of barbecue sauce."

David Wilson & John David Wilson of Short Sugar's Pit Bar-B-Q, Reidsville, NC

Click here to see our original text and photo profile of the Wilsons: http://www.thebarbecuebus.com/2011/11/short-sugars-bar-b-q.html

Recorded and cut by Rien Fertel. Shot and chopped by Denny Culbert.

"Evolving Out of Necessity and Good Taste."

Chip Stamey of Stamey's Barbecue, Greensboro, NC.

Click here to see our original text and photo profile of Mr. Stamey: http://www.thebarbecuebus.com/2011/11/stameys-barbecue-root-of-it-all.html

Recorded and cut by Rien Fertel. Shot and chopped by Denny Culbert. 

"Still Smokin' and Gonna Keep on Kicking at It. "

Brandon Cook of Cook's Barbecue, Lexington, NC.

Click to see our original profile of Brandon Cook: http://www.thebarbecuebus.com/2011/12/cooks-barbecue-born-in-pits.html

Cut by Rien Fertel and Chopped by Denny Culbert

"We call it dip because we're always dipping stuff in it."

Sonny Conrad of the Barbecue Center, Lexington, NC

Click to see our original Barbecue Center profile: http://www.thebarbecuebus.com/2012/02/sonny-conrad-barbecue-center-when-you.html

Audio: Rien Fertel / Photographs: Denny Culbert

The First Barbecue?

Latham "Bum" Dennis and Larry Dennis, owners of Bum's Restaurant in Ayden, NC. (Photo by Denny Culbert)

According to lore, the Dennis family follows a tradition set half a million years ago when man first roasted a wild animal over wood. Most of humanity quit smoking pigs and other creatures over burning embers, but “We just didn't never stop,” says Larry Dennis, manager and pitmaster at Bum’s Restaurant in Ayden. His father, the namesake “Bum,” opened his place back in 1963, thus placing himself in the innumerable company of Dennis barbecue masters.

The Standard Bearers of Barbecue: Skylight Inn, Ayden, NC

Skylight Inn (Pete Jones Barbecue) and Samuel Jones (Photos by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

At age 4, Samuel Jones told a newspaper reporter that, when he grows up, he wanted to be a trashman and the Prince of Barbecue. Sam’s grandfather, Pete Jones, the designated “King of Barbecue,” opened the Skylight Inn in 1947. Then only seventeen, Pete set out on his own after learning the trade from his extended family, the Dennis clan, whom history shows to be the first in North Carolina to serve pit barbecue to the public.

Survivalist Cue — Bunn's Barbecue, Windsor, NC

Bunn's Barbecue cornbread sandwich, Windsor, NC. ( Photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

Hurricane Ginger struck in 1971. After two-and-a-half decades of calm, Dennis, Floyd, and Irene made 1999 a hurricane-heavy year. Rain-soaker Tropical Storm Nicole fell in 2010. Hurricane Irene landed in August of the year following. All six storms caused the Cashie River in tiny downtown Windsor to overflow its banks, in effect, inundating historic, since 1938, Bunn’s Barbecue each time. As Bunn’s co-owner Randy Russell tells it, “We know all about flooding.”

John Henry Williams — Legend of the Lodge

John Henry Williams at Red Bridges Barbecue in Shelby, North Carolina. (Photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

Listen to Rien's interview with Mr. John Henry Williams on the play button below.


John Henry Williams is living North Carolina barbecue history. His sixty-six-plus years working for the same establishment just might set the record for longevity. When Red and Lyttle Bridges began serving sandwiches from a Shelby-town cattle feedlot in 1946, sixteen year old John Henry cooked the pork shoulders. In the 1950s, when Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge opened in a modernized location, he served cars as a curb boy. And now, on Sundays, this legend of the Lodge can be found behind the counter making sure everything is done the exact same way, a seven-decade-old formula that resides only in his memory. John Henry still delights in his devotion to Bridges Barbecue: “It’s a real good place and I love it, bound to, to be here sixty-six years.”

- Rien Fertel/ The Barbecue Bus

Brother, Sister, Barbecue - Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge

Natalie Ramsey, center, and the rest of the Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge crew chat between shifts, at the restaurant in Shelby, NC. (Photo by Denny Culbert)

Natalie Ramsey and Chase Webb, sister and brother, have inherited their mother’s smile, finish and start each other’s sentences, and together operate Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge, one of North Carolina’s oldest barbecue houses. Guided by mom, Lodge owner
Debbie Bridges-Webb, Natalie oversees the front of the house, with its plush blue-vinyl booths; Chase sits up all night watching the pork shoulders roast-tender over hickory coals.

Sonny Conrad — Barbecue Center: When You Dip I Dip We Dip.

Sonny Conrad at his restaurant the Barbecue Center in Lexington, NC. (Photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

In Lexington, North Carolina barbecue eaters don’t squirt on sauce, they dip in dip.

Defend Barbecue: Clyde Cooper's in Raleigh

Left: Clyde Cooper's on E. Davie Street in Raleigh, North Carolina. Right: "Pit Master King" James Bolton** stands in the doorway of the dining room at Cooper's. (Photos by Denny Culbert)

Preservation. It’s on the menu at Clyde Cooper’s Barbecue in downtown Raleigh. Preservation, along with chopped, sliced, and coarse ‘cue; ribs, fried chicken, and Brunswick stew; and more varieties of fried pork skins than there are toes on a pig's foot.

New Bern North Carolina's King of Cue: Moore's Olde Tyme Barbeque

Patrons line up at the counter for lunch at Moore's Old Tyme Barbeque in New Bern, NC. (Photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

History abounds at Moore’s Olde Tyme Barbeque. John Leonidas (LJ or John) Moore’s pithouse, operating in various incarnations over seven decades, might be most famous as a footnote in the subsequent states’ rights fight over the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Life on the Barbecue Bus

The Barbecue Bus is a Solera C-class motor-home on loan from Rien's parents. (Photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

In between our assigned interviews for the Southern Foodways Alliance there was a lot of driving, camping at Walmarts, coffee drinking, some fine dining, a bit of bike riding, plus a long haul to Virginia for Thanksgiving, and even more barbecue.

Rudy Cobb: The Place is the Space

Rudy Cobb at Jack Cobb & Son Barbecue Place, Farmville, North Carolina. (Photo by Denny Culbert/ The Barbecue Bus)

No chairs, no tables, just a counter. Take your food and go. Its name is the stuff that could have been dreamed up by a Hollywood script department: Jack Cobb & Son Barbecue Place. It’s a joint where even the owner, Rudy Cobb, can’t pin down exactly how old the establishment is. Could be sixty years, might just be seventy.