Myrtle Beach, S.C.–It’s 10 a.m. on Sunday. It’s time for brunch. Where to go? There are the usual spots, the chains, but not much for that special Sunday morning meal.
Let’s try the House of Blues located at Barefoot Landing. The restaurant is packed on Sunday, but there’s a table open at the end of the bar. Paint is scuffed off the chairs and booths to make them look old.
Here, you can eat several Soul and Creole entrees while listening to some fine gospel music performed by local blues artists.
The group is playing as we enter the dining area: Will the Circle Be Unbroken and Amazing Grace and a medley of rhythmic, foot-stomping hymns are part of the musical ensemble.
Audience participation. Folks strolling around the café, keeping time to the music. Children are on stage thumping tambourines. Mothers are smiling. Everyone is having a good time.
A man with a shaved head and an earring strolls up to our table. His name is Mondo, his biceps look like fire hydrants, his smile sincere. “West Virginia,” he booms across the room. “Why I’m from Parkersburg. Small world, huh? What can I get you good folks? If you’re smart, you’ll hit the bar.”
He’s right. The breakfast bar is a veritable feast: sausage and ham and bacon; eggs anyway you want them; gravy and fried potatoes; whopper-size biscuits; grits and hot cakes. A fruit bar beckons nearby.
The cooks are busy and the diners are filing in and out of the kitchen.
The House of Blues is a scenic attraction.
Walls are lined with memorabilia of the Delta. The decor could have been the set of a Hollywood movie. The old frame structure and paraphernalia of the House of Blues was salvaged by designers seeking to create a unified effect on audiences.
Twenty-four cotton mills and farms; 240 carpenters; a Pentecostal church; a theater, and a dance hall—all are part of the fabric used to build the House of Blues.
“Everything is recycled,” chimes Mondo of the facility. “We celebrate life and all kinds of music. We have eight venues in the chain, but Myrtle Beach is the largest.”
Mondo rubs his chin with a beefy right hand. “We believe in cultural difference, unity with diversity.”
Our waiter is a management trainer. He occasionally serves as “bouncer” when the need arises. On the night before, he escorted several rowdy fellows off the premises during a rock concert.
Mondo turned down a football scholarship at WVU to pursue a landscaping degree at Perdue in Indiana. “I was on the wrestling team,” he grins.
But Mondo isn’t flexing his muscles today. He’s waiting on customers and singing and keeping time to the beat.
He laughs. “I couldn’t make this kind of money as a landscape architect so I came here instead. I shaved the head and grew a goatee. It’s worked out fine. I think this is a wonderful place.”
Many local folks travel miles after church to check out the buffet. In a way, the restaurant is the answer to their prayers.
Several blues musicians are regulars at the Sunday brunch, which lasts until 2 p.m.
The eatery features a small stage, replete with sound equipment and filtered lights.
A regular lineup of gospel musicians waits their turn to play the music made popular in towns like New Orleans and Memphis.
Somebody is ready to check out. “The music is good and inspiring” relates the customers as they make their way out the front door.
The plain wooden walls are covered with Mississippi folk art, most of which reflects the mood of the Southern blues-style singers, plantation ambiance and African Americanculture.
Pictures of rag-tag men singing and playing their instruments on front porches and sidewalks and barges. Sketches of Robert Johnson and Bobby Blue Bland.
A nightclub, a juke-joint, a shrine of live-blues music.
Thick gospel rhythms reverberate through the corridors and the tambourines clang.
Sunday morning in South Carolina. Keeping time to the music. The beat goes on.
Somebody, pass the biscuits.
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Top o’ the morning!