Overview

The smoke was thick, the music was loud, and the beer was flowing. In the fast-and-loose 1980s, Jackson Station Rhythm & Blues Club in Hodges, South Carolina, was a festive late-night roadhouse filled with people from all walks of life who gathered to listen to the live music of high-energy performers. Housed in a Reconstruction-era railway station, the blues club embraced local Southern culture and brought a cosmopolitan vibe to the South Carolina backcountry. Over the years, Jackson Station became known as one of the most iconic blues bars in the South. It offered an exciting venue for local and traveling musical artists, including Widespread Panic, the Swimming Pool Qs, Bob Margolin, Tinsley Ellis, and R&B legend Nappy Brown, who loved to keep playing long after sunrise. The good times ground to a terrifying halt in the early morning hours of April 7, 1990. A brutal attack--an apparent hate crime--on the owner Gerald Jackson forever altered the lives of all involved. In this fast-paced narrative, Jackson Station emerges as a cultural kaleidoscope that served as an oasis of tolerance and diversity in a time and place that often suffered from undercurrents of bigotry and violence--an uneasy coexistence of incongruent forces that have long permeated southern life and culture.

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9781643361451

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Reviews

"Harrison delivers this explanation of Jackson Station with a mix of historical and qualitative literary nonfiction, social history, ethnomusicology, and cultural sociology... an engaging, accessible book. -- ""Social Forces"" An account of an extraordinary Southern musical oasis and the tragedy that shut it down... Fans of the blues and lively music clubs will find this fascinating. -- ""Kirkus Reviews"""

An account of an extraordinary Southern musical oasis and the tragedy that shut it down... Fans of the blues and lively music clubs will find this fascinating. -- Kirkus Reviews

Author Information

Daniel M. Harrison is a professor of sociology at Lander University in Greenwood, South Carolina, and the author of Making Sense of Marshall Ledbetter: The Dark Side of Political Protest.

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