PAT DUGGINS: Everybody, it seems, has a favorite story about barbecue. Here's mine. Mrs. Duggins and I took a road trip to Memphis. We were going to see Bonnie Raitt in concert. Now, when it comes to barbecue, Memphis has Elwood’s Shack, Corky’s, Fat Larry's and they all have their fans. But with apologies to all, this story is about Charlie Vergos Rendezvous. So, we arrived in Memphis midday. We pulled into a municipal parking deck, and I pulled out my cell phone to try to get a table for lunch. I don't remember what day it was, but the lady on the other end of the line is going, ‘Oh, Mr. Duggins, we don't serve lunch today.’ And I totally understood, but I must admit, I did give her a sob story, kind of like, oh, we just drove all the way from Tuscaloosa and so on and so on and so forth. And finally, she says, ‘Oh, just knock on the door. We'll feed you.’ Now you might get the impression that I'm telling you this story to send the message, ‘Hey... Pat pulled one over on Charlie Burgess rendezvous,’… not even close. We knocked on the door. The door swung open and the place was packed. It was full of people who didn't want to wait until dinner time for some ribs. So we had lunch. It was great. I got a t shirt. And to top it all off, we're walking out of the building, and we run smack into country music legend Marty Stewart. Now, for anybody who doesn't know, he played alongside Johnny Cash, and, if you saw the Ken Burns PBS documentary on country music, Marty Stewart was in every other scene. So that's my story about barbecue. And Robert Moss has me beat. He's author of the book "Barbecue, The History of an American institution." It's in a new and expanded edition from University of Alabama press. He joins me next on APR notebook.
PAT -- Robert Moss, thank you so much for joining me.
ROBERT MOSS-- Oh, well, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
PAT-- Okay, what is your first best barbecue memory?
MOSS-- Well, the first I'd say it's not the, maybe not the best memory. It's a good memory, but it's not a very clear memory. I vaguely remember from being a little, a little kid, probably, probably in elementary school, going to some kind of church event of pig picking it, one of the members farms and them having a whole pig spread out. And I remember very vaguely or very specifically, that the pig had an apple in its mouth. And that's about all I think I remember of the whole event, other than the pig really impressed me and the Apple was in its mouth. Again. That's really hazy. About all I remember is that pig's head and the apple. And it really wasn't until I got into high school, and then really into college, I started eating a lot of barbecue restaurants. And this is back in back in the 20th century, when barbecue restaurants are still pretty obscure, and I fell in love with it then. So I have some strong memories of eating barbecue then, but the very first one goes back way back to childhood.
PAT-- Now that sounds familiar, because, like, you know. Growing up, we would go to barbecue places, but it's kind of like, you go in, you order something, they give you a styrofoam thingy, and it's got ribs in it, right? So take your experience as a youngster, and then fast forward to just being married. And that's me, because, like, my wife and I, Mrs. Duggins, we're down in a Miami and as you know, there's, there's there's a big Cuban influence down there. And I don't even remember what the event was, but it was exactly the way you described it. I mean, they just, they, there were guys smoking cigars, and somebody dug a pit, somebody lit a fire, they brought in a whole pig wrapped in chain link fence, if you can believe it, and they used the the fencing to be able to, you know, grab the pig and flip it while it was cooking. And it was great, but, but does it confuse people when they read your book and you say that all of this started without the styrofoam thingy, and it was these big church events, pig with the apple in the mouth kind of a thing that really got barbecue started
MOSS--Some people for sure. I think, you know, we have such an idea in our heads of what barbecue is. But one thing that comes through in the book is how much barbecues changed over the centuries, really. And every bit, every you know, every couple decades, it's it has changed. It's become different. What I think people forget, and I tend to forget this too when you start talking about food of any sort in the 19th century. But particularly barbecues is there is no refrigeration, and that changes so much about what you could cook, you know, investments in general, and then barbecues. Not only was no refrigeration, but there were outdoor events. There were always outdoor events. You couldn't go to the butcher shop. And, you know, get get pork shoulder or rack of ribs in the 19th century, you you started with a unit. Of a whole pig or a whole cow or a whole sheep, or what, quite commonly, a little bit of all of those, and there's no refrigeration. So what do you do with it when you have to take it to wherever the barbecue is going to be held? And usually these were community events. Farmers would donate the livestock. They would actually kill, kill the animals right there, butcher them and put them right on the pits. So they didn't need any refrigeration, because a whole pig not gonna keep very good for very long. In July and the middle of the South.
PAT-- I was surprised how much of all this was linked to politics. Because, like, you know, instead of kissing babies and handing out buttons, what's in your book, people from like, what George Washington to LBJ and farther than that, would roast up, whatever, and then they would invite the voting public to come in and eat.
MOSS-- Yeah, barbecue is so intimately connected to American politics. It was even before America was a country, back back in the colonial era, George Washington indeed went to a lot of barbecues in Virginia. We'd make the rounds during campaign season, and he hosted a couple of barbecues himself. And that was actually something that candidates for office would do in Virginia back then. You weren't supposed to campaign in politics, right? It was supposed to be this gentlemanly thing, but you would show your hospitality about holding a giant feast for everybody. And of course, everybody get together, and you'd walk around and talk, but you weren't giving speeches and all that kind of stuff. So barbecues were really, you know, pretty early on, politicians realized you want to get a bunch of people together. There's no mass media. There's barely newspapers, and newspapers take a week or more to get out. If you want to get in front of people, get them together at a barbecue, and then you can do the politicking. And over time that that evolved into speeches. In fact, the expression stump speech, uh, originated from a barbecue when a politician would jump up on a stump to make a speech.
PAT—So, getting back to George Washington and Virginia, I'm wondering, do you get hate mail from people who read your book and they find that it is not barbecue hot spots like Texas or Memphis or Kansas City, but rather colonial Virginia.
MOSS-- The historians say that's where barbecue began. I don't think it's hate mail so much as I get a lot of sort of confused or baffled expressions like Virginia really, because even though I these days, there's actually some excellent barbecue in Virginia, it doesn't have a reputation of being a great barbecue state the way Texas or the Carolinas or Georgia does, in fact, for a long time, Virginia sort of had a, I think, an inferiority complex. You drive through Virginia, you'd see a bunch of signs for genuine Carolina style barbecue, you know, on the side of the road and all that kind of stuff. But Virginia actually has a very long and old barbecue tradition. In fact, one of the one of the oldest barbecue traditions in in the United States. In fact, that you can make the case, I think that bar Virginia is sort of the cradle of American barbecue. It wasn't the very first place where people were putting pigs and animals on pits and cooking them over open fire that happened all over the colonies, but it really became a social tradition and became a Virginia style barbecue in the colonial era, George Washington's era, and then it spread from there, sort of throughout the South. In fact, you'll see descriptions of barbecue in Texas in like the 1840s and it's actually they're actually called Old style, or old school or old fashioned Virginia style barbecues in Texas, because that was sort of where people associated barbecue coming from.
PAT-- Okay, let's talk about Alabama. It seems like every time a journalist comes to the state to write about barbecue, there's one thing they're going to talk about, and it's the white sauce. And I got, I got to confess I was, I was going to try and dance around it until I read somewhere that Big Bob Gibson in Decatur is celebrating its centennial this year. So, I'm like 'rats. I gotta talk to Robert about the white sauce.' How did Big Bob come up with this?
MOSS-- Yeah, so that is an interesting story. And when I first started writing the book, when I was I grew up in South Carolina, barbecue is much more regionalized. Even in 2000 you know, 2005 you couldn't find white sauce anywhere in the Carolinas. I never had it. I never had until I went down to Big Bob Gibson's and up in Decatur, Alabama, and I didn't know much about it, but, you know, big Bob's has already said that he invented it, and it's, from what I can tell, it's absolutely true. It's one of the few examples we have of really knowing where somebody invented a sauce and when? Yeah, big Bob Gibson was founded in 1925 and the history of that restaurant is a lot like the history of restaurants in general, which is Big Bob Gibson was a boilermaker for the element of railroad for decades. That was his career. But he started cooking barbecue in his backyard for friends. And somewhere around 1925 he started realizing that he could, you know, cook a little extra and start selling it to people the neighborhood. He sort of set up a, you know, probably just a backyard take out stand kind of thing by, uh, certainly by 1927 i. I found newspaper ads. He had set up an actual barbecue stand. It was always called a barbecue stand up through World War Two. So take out operation, very informal type of thing, you probably think a roadside stand kind of deal. By the 1930s though 1940s they became a little more permanent. And certainly after World War Two, he established a true brick and mortar restaurant, I think actually cinder block restaurant in Decatur, and started cooking somewhere in there. He came up with white sauce. And I've talked to Chris Lilley, who is actually married into the good Bob Gibson family. I think he's the fifth generation, or his wife is the fifth generation, descended from, from, from Big Bob. And he sort of has taken over there as a sort of pit master. Of course, he's a big barbecue competition champion and everything else. But he says that Big Bob actually invented it specifically for the chick. And he had different sauce, and they still have a different sauce that they use with the pork. He said is it was actually inspired by a North North Carolina style barbecue. So if you're familiar with the the Piedmont style of North Carolina barbecue, which is a little vinegar and pepper with some ketchup in it to turn it red. Apparently, he took that idea, but instead of ketchup, used mayonnaise.
PAT-- I was gonna say, back in the day, I had a coworker from Australia, and he said that if you went to Australia and gave an Australian child a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, they would be utterly repulsed. And, so I was just like, you know, when I was researching this interview, I was thinking, holy smoke, man. You take the white sauce and take it to like Memphis, or take it to Kansas City or Texas, whatever, like that. People are gonna run you out of town on a rail but out of town on a rail. What do you think?
MOSS-- I think 10 years ago, 20 years ago, absolutely, I think that barbecue, I write about this a good bit in the later, the newest edition of the book barbecue, regional styles have really blurred a lot in the in the 21st century. One thing that happened was barbecue really declined and sagged as a restaurant food, starting in the 1970s 1980s and really went downhill, and people sort of forgot about it. And then as you got closer to 2000 suddenly people started getting interested in it again. And after early part of the 20th century, it just really boom and took off. But what you had was it used to be that most people encountered barbecue with a local barbecue joint, and the local barbecue joint made whatever the owner had learned to cook from whoever he apprenticed with when he worked at some other guy's barbecue joint and then went out and opened his own. And so you really see these hyper regional styles of barbecue in individual locations, largely driven by restaurants and by this sort of informal apprenticeship system, which is how people learn how to cook barbecue in restaurants. You went work for a guy, you learned his tricks, and then you went and opened your own restaurant. And when I was growing up in Greenville, South Carolina, in the 80s and 90s, I'd never heard of yellow mustard sauce, and that was because that was from Columbia, which is all of 100 miles down the road, much less white barbecue sauce.
PAT-- Being the child of the (19)60s that I am, I kind of saw firsthand how the interstate highway system and McDonald's kind of grew up together. Now I was wondering if I could get you to talk about an earlier innovation. I'm talking about the Model T Ford and barbecue take it away.
MOSS-- Okay, so yeah, they we were talking about how barbecues changed so much over over the centuries. In the 20th century, the rise of restaurants really drove the modern style of barbecue, the regional style. And what really drove the rise for restaurants was the automobile, the Model T and all the other automobiles, it suddenly became very affordable. And people could, you know, afford to take them out. And then going out for touring, just driving became really popular pastime. And but the roads were bad. So there's a big Good Roads Movement to improve and build the highways and so in, starting in the 20s, but really taking off in the 30s. And then after World War Two, as more and more highways were built, people were driving all over the place, first, originally, just to go tour and drive around and enjoy being out, and then to go on vacation and go places. You know, when Florida boomed, you know, because people were coming down, you know, down to Florida to see the alligator farms and all the other things that you would do, and stopping off along the way to they needed something to eat. Barbecue was a perfect roadside food in the 20s and 30s, because it didn't take a lot of equipment or capital expense to build a restaurant. You could dig a hole in the ground, and the original barbecue stands would often have a hit in the ground, just like they used to cook on out the big outdoor things, and they would cook right there. You just set a little stand or something, put out a sign. I got some great pictures in the book of these little hand painted BBQ signs on the side of the road. And you can just pull in grab a sandwich for 15 to 25 cents and something to drink and be on your way.
PAT-- Right, even earlier than the Model T. It's kind of hard to talk about barbecue without touching on race following the Civil War and the failure of reconstruction. I keep reading about how a lot of freed black men looking to make a living would fall back on their experience as pit masters. Can you talk about that?
MOSS-- Yeah, it actually that goes that tradition goes way back before the Civil War. So in, you know, and of course, the roots of barbecue were in Virginia and in the south. And like any sort of large outdoor event in the south, the folks doing the labor were primarily going to be enslaved African Americans. And from very early on, there were accounts of the men who are actually tending the pits were typically, were typically slaves and typically black, not, not universally, but that was often the case. And slaves actually would hold their own barbecue, our own barbecues. They were staged. Sometimes they were sort of endorsed by the slave owners as sort of like a form of celebration. Oftentimes, they were illicit and sort of staged as a way of celebrating. In fact, some of the earliest slave rebellions, like Gabriel's revolt, were organized and planned and Nat Turner's rebellion were organized at barbecues where African Americans were staying there and barbecues getting together and then using that as a cover to plan reports, so that the tradition of African Americans cooking barbecue goes way, way back, right after the Civil War, during the early reconstruction days formerly enslaved people, the freedmen would celebrate Emancipation Day. In fact, Juneteenth was which we still celebrate today. Was one of the original emancipation days. But there are many others. Each state had their own. It was on their own. Dates were tied, tied through when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in that state. But the classic way of celebrating Emancipation Day right after the Civil War was to have a big barbecue, and barbecue is at the center of that event. And so barbecues were very important in the African American community, as you know, an internal form of celebration. But also, you had all these great African American men who were they didn't call them pit masters back then. They tended to call them the barbecue man or a barbecue King. Often you have the barbecue king of the of the county, and they realized over time, you know, that barbecue went from being this free event to being more something that you would do for like civic celebrations, raise funds, raise money, political events. And so often, if you want to have barbecue, you'd hire your local barbecue man, and he'd have a crew of people come and do all the cooking for you. Those the men doing the actual cooking tended to be, did to be black men. And that happened, you know, from very, very early on. But as 19th century progressed, it got close to the 20th century, these men started realizing they could charge for their services, and would get paid to stage a barbecue and develop quite, quite a reputation as the, you know, in their communities, as if you want great barbecue, you can hire this guy. He's going to come out and cook it for you. And that then eventually led right into restaurants in the early 20th century, as a lot of of guys who got started, sort of caterers, is often called or barbecue men would sort of set up a more permanent operation to barbecue stands are selling regular on the weekends, and then eventually, perhaps make a restaurant out of it.
PAT-- I wanted to touch on that point that when, when barbecue went from being a big public event to a restaurant where you would walk in and make your order, that's where entrepreneurs like John mills in Memphis or Dreamland here in Tuscaloosa really started, you know, coming out of the shadows and establishing themselves in their own right.
MOSS-- Yeah, that that's absolutely the case. A lot, a lot of the early restaurants evenly split between white restaurateurs and black restaurateurs. But during Jim Crow, opening a barbecue restaurant was one of the few avenues that African Americans had toward really establishing their own businesses. And, you know, being, you know, being their own bosses, making money, you know, establishing things for their families, something that didn't involve domestic service. You know, being a, you know, Butler, chauffeur, made something like that.
PAT-- You'd mentioned earlier about Jim Crow, and I was really struck by the role that barbecue played in the civil rights movement. Can you talk a bit about Ollie McClung and his barbecue restaurant in Birmingham and that desegregation lawsuit that wound up going before the Supreme Court?
MOSS-- Yeah. So 1964 Civil Rights Act passed, um, and the first, really the first Civil Rights Act in 100 years. And so it's it, your Jim Crowe had sort of come in into in the 1870s, 1880s and got got worse and worse and worse until you had the fully segregated south. But. You know, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was all about public accommodations, which would include hotels, theaters, and in particular, restaurants, which were very heavily segregated in the south in the in the 1960s. The whole basis for the Civil Rights Act the authority it was in the Interstate Commerce Clause, in the federal government's right, constitutional duty or and right to to regulate interstate commerce. And, Ollie McClung ran Ollie's barbecue in Birmingham. Middle aged, white guy has been in his family for a while. He was actually approached by the Birmingham restaurant restaurateur Association, I think even before the Civil Rights Act passed, because they wanted a test case, they didn't want to have to desegregate their restaurants. And they picked Ollie and they picked a barbecue restaurant specifically because they felt like you would have the best case against the Civil Rights Act. It was argued that always was, you know, it was not any near any bus stations or train stations. It was, you know, there weren't track. Wasn't feeding travelers on the highway. It was in downtown Birmingham. You serve almost exclusively a local clientele. It didn't buy its meat, you know, it didn't buy all its food and everything from suppliers across the country, unlike a lot of the other Birmingham restaurants and so that was that was put forward, as you know, being unconstitutional for the federal government to force Ali to desegregate. It went through pretty quickly with the Supreme Court, I think, before 1964 was out and Katzenbach versus McClung, or McClung basically said, No, you know, even though you're not technically, you know, next to a train station feeding a lot of interstate travelers, everything you do moves in interstate commerce. And we have the right, and Congress has the right, to pass these regulations. And that was one of the key test cases for for for the Civil Rights Act and upholding the Civil Rights Act, and the fact there was a barbecue restaurant, and the sort of local nature of barbecue, I think, play a lot into the case. And there are a couple other test cases involved barbecue restaurants that followed in the wake of the Ollie's Katzenbach versus McClung.
PAT-- During a business trip to Atlanta, I kept hearing from people, ‘oh, go to places like the busy bee,’ because, like, it makes fried chicken, and that's where, that's where MLK would eat all the time, and it was good, but it was barbecue places where a lot of these civil rights leaders would meet and plan their protest. I mean, you had Brenda's and Montgomery, Lonnie is in Selma, MLK, Ralph Abernathy, Stokely Carmichael, all of them are eating and meeting in barbecue places, and yet that really didn't seem to make the news.
MOSS-- Yeah, I don't know why. I'm not sure if it's just because barbecue restaurants are sort of like these neighborhood Hangouts. It was a great place to gather. But yeah, Martin Luther King, Jr, and all his, all his sort of lieutenants would gather at Alex, he's Alex rib heaven. Was the name of it in Atlanta. That was sort of where they planned lots of demonstrations and planned, you know, lots of things that they were doing. But I do think it was a bit of a, you know, an oasis, if you will, where they could relax and gather and just hang out. But yeah, barbecue definitely. You mentioned ladies, mentioned Brenda's. Those were sort of gathering places during the Civil Rights Movement, and that played an intimate role in it, both in, you know, the landmark decisions, but also in sort of sustaining the people who are behind the movement.
PAT-- We were talking about McDonald's earlier, and I was wondering, do you cringe when people talk about the McRib?
MOSS-- I do. I think I say in the book that 1982 is the the lowest point, the nadir of American barbecue. And I picked 1982 because that was the year that McDonald's introduced the McRib, and there's a whole story behind McDonald's, and it's connection to barbecue that you have to read a book if you want to want to get into I uncovered some some wonderful pictures in the research of the old McDonald's, and it's quite a story. But, yeah, in 1982 McDonald's produced this breast meat pork patty thing that sort of looked like a rib and had this sweet, Candy style barbecue sauce, and for some reasons, on a hoagie bun, a complete simulation of barbecue, if there ever was one. Some people love it. It's a cult favorite for I don't know why, but so if you're a McRib fan, that's great, but it certainly isn't barbecue, and it certainly sort of represented the low state that barbecue had fallen into in the 1980s by which point, people were not cooking on wood pits very much anymore. They were cooking in ovens, and tended to use the sauce to give flavor. And so barbecue, anything with barbecue sauce on it, you know, instantly became barbecue in the 1980s
PAT-- Well, Ronald McDonald notwithstanding. I mean, Americans, at least, talking about eating healthier. Could that possibly fit into the notion of barbecue going away?
MOSS-- I think a little bit there were trends in that direction and but I don't know the barbecue really was, I don't think was that the health knock so much. I think it was more trends in the restaurant industry. Barbecue got very expensive at the same time that the fast food restaurants like McDonald's were mastering the speedy service system and doing streamline, make them fast, sell them cheap, you know, and making everything very standardized. So you can just hire some kid, you know, give a paper hat and an hour on the griddle. He could, you know, he could make baked burgers. Barbecue was not fast food. It was expensive. It took some training and at least mentorship to learn how to work the pits. Wood got very expensive. Hardwood did in the late 60s, early 70s, and you start seeing this trend, and start in the 70s, to pick up in the 80s, of all these barbecue restaurants switching to gas. But the biggest thing was they just really couldn't compete on the margins with, like, low margin places like like the burger joints, and you just couldn't sell RV for that. So I think what happened is more that you saw lots and lots of barbecue restaurants closing in the 70s and 80s, where it was the premier roadside food in the 50s and into the 60s, a lot of the families who founded barbecue restaurants, their kids who often grew up working in the restaurants. I don't want to work in this restaurant, go get something. I'll find another career. And so you see lots of folks when they're ready to retire. They didn't know when the family wanted to take it, and so then a lot of them ended up either changing hands and going downhill or just being sold.
PAT-- You kind of hinted about this earlier, but I wanted to get you on the record. Are you a sweet and tangy sauce guy, or do you lean more toward the vinegar?
MOSS-- I like a little bit of everything, regionally speaking, but I tend to be much more toward the Carolina style sauces, which would be vinegar, especially if you're doing whole hog. Yeah, I love the PD style vinegar sauce. I am, however, pretty, pretty partial these days, so I never heard of it growing up. Of the Midland style mustard based sauce in South Carolina. That's one of my favorites. It is definitely sweet and tangy. You know, depending on how much mustard you put in, it can be pretty pungent, too. And I put a good either I make it myself, you know, it seems super easy to make brown sugar or honey, so little combination of that in vinegar. So I guess I like, I like a little bit of both. I am not as big of a fan of, like I said, the Memphis style. They're very thick brown sauces. I tend be much more toward what we have in here in the Carolinas, but over the years, I've grown to, I think, respect most of the different sauces, and then they go well with different kinds of cuts of meat.
PAT-- Robert moss is author of the book "Barbecue, The History of an American institution" It's in a new and expanded edition from University of Alabama Press. Thank you so much for talking to me.
MOSS-- Oh yeah, thanks so much. I'm always happy to talk about barbecue and barbecue history.
PAT-- I'm Pat Duggins, and you've been listening to APR notebook. Is there somebody you'd like to hear from that you'd like me to track down. Just drop me a line at pduggins at APR dot org. Our student interns in the APR newsroom are Victoria Rodriguez, Lyric Franklin, Samantha Triana, Ethan Golson, Cat Townsend, Torin Daniel, and Alex Schoenfeld. You can listen again to this episode and everything we do in the APR newsroom by going to apr.org The theme music for APR notebook is sunny days. I'm Pat Duggins, thanks for joining me on APR notebook.
