Sam Stout lives close to Granville Tennessee, in Cookville. He started playing guitar when he was nine. "My dad is a Dobro player," he says. "I came from a musical family. I've been around it all of my life." A few years ago, Sam was in Granville for the annual Heritage Day festival, and he ducked into the general store to cool off. The old store had been in disrepair until Harold and Beverly Sutton (no relation to the original owner) refurbished it and planned a grand reopening in conjunction with the festival. "It was Memorial Day weekend and it was really hot," Sam recalls. "A couple friends, Mike Garrison and Brents Pearson, and I walked in to stay cool and he met Mr. Harold Sutton at the door. I said "We were wondering if we could get some chairs and pick a little bit here, and stay out of everybody's way.' He said 'Fine,' and that started Sutton's Ole Time Music Hour. We were sitting down in front of the cash register, and I noticed his eyes lit up when we were playing. Then I walked into the back of the store and saw the original bookkeeping riser and thought, 'This would be a great venue for music!' We continued to talk as the day went on and I asked him, "Would you be in on opening the store on Saturday nights and we'll come and play?" "We started doing that every once in a while and it really caught on," Sam says." Then in December of 2007, Harold and Beverly Sutton donated the store back to the town of Granville. When they did that, they wanted something to be done in the store to promote bluegrass music." Randall Clemons, president of the Granville Museum asked Sam for his suggestions. "The first thing that came to my mind was. 'Let's do a radio show out of the store every Saturday night and do it similar to the Grand Ole Opry, but center it on bluegrass and old-time music,' " he said. Sam Stout started producing the show in April 2008 with "no formal training whatsoever," he smiles. "I'd always been a musician, and spent ten years in Nashville as a demo singer, working with pursuing two unsuccessful record deals, but my first love was bluegrass." This is Sam's Mel Bay Artist Interview with Erica Lee. http://www.melbay.com http://www.granvilletn.com/ Produced by Rob Haines http://www.robhainesstudio.com

• published: 08 Sep 2014
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