The New Swinging Medallions

♪ [opening music] ♪ Hello, I'm Beryl Dakers.

Welcome to Palmetto Scene.

Things are starting to look up as friends and family are looking forward to the return of good times in 2021, so let the good times begin with some good music from The Swinging Medallions.

This nationally recognized South Carolina band formed in the early 1960's.

Now, what's amazing about this group is they don't seem to know the meaning of the word 'retirement.'

We found them recently still swinging at the Abbeville Spring Festival.

<Narrator> Ah, yes!

Beautiful, quiet Abbeville, South Carolina located in the Upstate, where the Abbeville Spring Festival is held every year.

Families can enjoy rides, treats and famous rock and roll bands like The Swinging Medallions.

We say 'famous' because this group became nationally known, becoming a beach music favorite for many generations to come, past and present.

The Swinging Medallions was formed in 1962 in Greenwood, South Carolina by John McElrath, who played keyboards, and Joe Morris, who played drums.

Carroll Bledsoe, who played trumpet, also became a member.

It was a way to make extra money while they were students at Lander College.

The group became an official beach music party music band on the college frat house circuit, and by 1966, their single Double Shot of My Baby's Love went national, reaching number 17 on the US Billboard Hot 100 becoming a party classic for college students.

They toured up and down the east coast, hitting 34 states in three months.

Their follow up single She Drives Me Out of My Mind also charted nationally, and they appeared on Dick Clark's Where the Action Is all chronicled in Carroll Bledsoe's book The Swinging Medallions: Double Shot An Insider's History of The Swinging Medallions .

Bledsoe says he was inspired to write the book by Swinging Medallions fans.

<Carroll> We played several years ago down at the club in Greenville, South Carolina, and a man and his wife were sitting at the table where I was on break, and he was asking me all kinds of questions about "what did y'all do, and how did y'all do this?"

and when we got through talking, he says, "you know, you need to be writing this down or nobody will know about it."

We kept it G-rated, but it's been a blessing, it really has.

♪ [instrumental band music] ♪ Excitement about The Swinging Medallions runs in the family.

Emily Bledsoe is Carroll Bledsoe's granddaughter.

<Emily> As the Special Events Coordinator for the city of Abbeville, it's important for us to get as many people as possible downtown into the community, and the best way to do that, I think, is to have The Swinging Medallions, because they always bring a big crowd.

It just is going on from generation to generation.

People who are older love it and people who are younger love it and just pass that along.

When I see my grandfather dancing, it's kind of unbelievable, because growing up, when I was younger, he was just my Grandpa, and I never really thought about it, and then as I got older and people would recognize my last name and ask about it, I didn't realize he was this big star, and people would be so excited, and I think it's really cool just kind of seeing him in his element and having fun like he's a kid again.

I really enjoy that.

<Narrator> Although no longer with us, John McElrath's vision is carried on by friends and family.

>> My father would be proud of this band today, because it's exactly the type of music and style and fun that they started back in the 60s.

♪ [snare drumming] ♪ <Narrator> After all these years, The Swinging Medallions still perform Double Shot of My Baby's Love and other hits like Hey, Baby today with original member Larry Roark on keyboards, and original members Joe Morris and Carroll Bledsoe, occasionally appearing in their red shirts out front, still singing, swinging, and dancing.

>> It's a legacy that these guys' father kept going for so many years, but it's just important to keep it going.

♪ ...be my girl ♪ ♪ <Shane> Truthfully, what am I doing here?

It's only because I just love it.

♪ [performance of Hey, Baby continues] ♪ After 50 something years, 57 years, it just seems like the natural thing to do.

♪ [song continues] ♪ ♪ Hey ... ♪ <Emily> The thing I want people to remember most is just the fun.

I love watching people out here and just dancing and moving along to the music, and I think it takes people back to a really fun time in their lives, and I really enjoy that.

♪ [ Hey, Baby concludes] ♪ [cheers and applause] >> Metal fabricators cut, shape, position and align different types of metal.

They typically work for construction and manufacturing companies, while the metals they work with are used to build structures, but metal fabrication as art can be a unique mode of artistic expression.

Unlike sculptures produced through casting, fabricated sculptures are shaped and assembled by welding or by using fasteners, resulting in large and technically complicated artworks.

Let's meet artist Chris Stuyck.

♪ [upbeat music] ♪ >> My name is Chris Stuyck.

I'm a metal artist, and I own Stuyck Company.

♪ [upbeat music continues] ♪ Stuyck Company was established in 1998.

We were helping out contractors at that time and also doing some unique art pieces as we could afford, and slowly through time, we start making enough money and headway with reputation that we could start focusing more on artwork.

My company's been lucky in that we've networked, and a lot of people think highly of what I do, so we've been invited to make wonderful pieces that celebrate South Carolina.

We've built the Hootie and the Blowfish monument in Five Points.

We've built a wonderful gazebo for Hampton-Preston Mansion.

We have things at the zoo that we've made.

We have a lot of stuff along the Riverwalk.

We have lines of park furniture.

We like to build stuff that's artistically pleasing, site specific, and functional more than anything else.

I think what attracted me most towards metal, steel and steel for one, would be its permanence, its use in our society for just about everything we deal with from day to day.

It makes our cars.

It makes our lamp posts.

It makes everything under the sun that we use.

We even put our fruits and vegetables in cans made of steel.

♪ When you look at art, and you look at metal in art, the people who do it, they want a certain permanence.

They want a piece that lasts the ages, the eons, that's going to be there.

They don't want a temporary piece.

I've also found that metal is very predictable.

Metal shapes stay the same.

You can alter them.

You can make interesting, wonderful pieces out of them.

Metal artists know this, and they build their work to rust or to not rust, to have a presence about them, a permanence.

You never see a dainty metal piece out in public, unless perhaps jewelry if you want to go that way, but that's a whole different style of metal art.

We work with other artists as well.

It's vital as an artist to communicate with other artists, because everybody has a viewpoint.

Everybody has an idea, and they're usually helpful in the creative process.

People who collaborate in my art pieces, we just have fun with it, try not to take too much credit for it.

We just go at it.

Great fun!

<Will Bryan> My name is Will Bryan.

I'm the founder of Public Works of HeART.

We believe that all communities should be beautiful, and we use public art to make that happen.

My background is in graphic design, so I traditionally work in a 2-D, two dimensional medium in print or in digital, so it was wonderful working with Chris, because his background obviously is in metal sculpture, and so he has a wealth of knowledge and was able to help teach me, help me think about things that might work in two dimensions but don't work in three dimensions, and be able to overcome some of those hurdles before they ever happened in the design process.

The piece that I'm sitting on right now is the Butterfly Bench in the Cayce River Arts District here at the entrance of the Cayce Riverwalk, which leads to the Congaree River, and so the whole concept behind this was we wanted to celebrate the nature or the natural setting around here, and we wanted it to be very whimsical and fun, so it needed to be beautiful, and all of the designs and everything in it are just kind of meant to reflect the organic nature of the flight of a butterfly or the falling of leaves or the flow of water that are all part of this specific community, and it's turned out really, really great.

So one of the unique things about creating public art with steel is just that, it's public, so it needs to be safe for everything from toddlers, all the way up to senior citizens, everybody in between, and so you have to think about the way you design it, everything from the size of the holes that are within it or the edges and how soft they are, or how much something bends or sticks out, because you don't want somebody to be able to get hurt on it, while at the same time, it needs to be beautiful, it needs to be functional, it needs to be safe.

So one of my favorite pieces here in the Cayce River Arts District is the Light Diamond.

It's over seven foot tall and completely stainless steel.

It turned out fantastic.

Since it's stainless steel, the sun shines brightly and reflects the surface of it during the day.

At night time, as it gets dark, a light sensor turns on the lights on the inside of it, and it actually reflects the metal from the inside out through the holes and the designs within it, so it's a very different experience during the day versus at night time, which is kind of the concept of it between the suns and the moons all the way around it.

<Chris> I kind of enjoy all my pieces that I've done, my art that I've made.

They use it.

They come to me and say they like it.

I usually ask how they're interacting with it, because that's important to me.

I put a whole lot of thought and effort into what I do.

It's important to me that whoever looks at it, whoever comes to see it, comes back and looks at it again.

That is the ultimate compliment.

♪ [upbeat music concludes] ♪ >> And now it's off to the race track.

Well... sort of.

Soda City RC is a non-profit remote control racing facility in the heart of Columbia.

It gives the sport of RC racing a place to call home.

At first glance, these remote control cars may look like children's toys, but in actuality, they are highly customized.

And boy, do they pack a serious punch on the racetrack.

♪ [hard rock music] ♪ >> Soda City RC is a nonprofit organization facility that we are open here just to give the support of RC Racing a place to call home in Columbia, South Carolina.

♪ [hard rock music] ♪ We race what affectionately we call as toy cars, but they're actually model cars, model remote control cars that act and race and are able to adjust, just like some real cars.

They actually are driven on electric power, lithium polymer batteries.

We call them LiPo's.

So it's very, in terms of technology, in terms of all the aspects of the techy side, they're very much advanced and they're very adjustable.

They're very much almost like a real car, just miniature and brought down to scale and they're scale model race cars, is what they really are.

It's almost setup very much like a Motocross or another kind of amateur racing, where you have heats that are divided into similar classes.

Classes are the different kinds of cars.

They're different kinds of chassis, different kinds of motors, different kinds of specific rule sets for these cars.

And so you go into a heat type setup where you have no more than about six or eight cars at a time on the track.

And they get divvied up into different racers that are in that class.

You might have one, you might have five heats of the same class.

And you go through several rounds, and by the time you get your best qualification rounds, you have the main event we call the 'Mains' that are actually - those are for the placement.

Those are for the end of the day, and that's for the first, second, third and bragging rights and the, you know, the ability just to talk smack to your friend and fellow racer, and then feel good that you did a good job.

♪ <Jimbo Massalou> My time is all here.

All our extra time is right here.

I started racing in 2006 to 2010 outdoor.

It's pretty serious.

The competition is tough.

I mean, in between each race, guys will come over.

They'll look at the results, see where they're at, see what they need to do to the car to make it better.

What they try to do is get your best run in.

The person with the best time in that five minutes, of course, is going to be on the pole.

And that's where you want to be.

And if it's on your side and your car is good enough, that's where you're going to be.

<Ryan Evans> I was like, this is something I want to do, because we have done so many sports.

Like I did basketball.

I didn't really like that.

We did Motocross.

It was cool, it was fun, but it wasn't really my thing, and now we found RC, and I was like, let's do this.

Now we're fully into it.

I really like the racers down here.

They've always got nice people.

And a couple of people that used to race at our track who drove out three or four hours are racing down here now, because this opened up about a year ago.

And so I'm getting to meet some of them people again.

Some of our buddies come down here and hang out and race.

But what I like mostly is just, just to have fun and just to experience with other people, and just kind of like getting to drive because RC, it can be tense at some points, but most of the time it's just like a stress relief.

<Dylan Fuge> It's fun to race with other people.

It brings out competition.

My hands start to sweat because I just want to win so bad.

It feels like your work pays off.

This is the same thing that happened with my car.

It paid off as soon as I got it running, and I've gotten a lot better since that happened.

I race adults and kids.

I like the people, so if I break and my dad is not here, other people can help me fix my car.

<Ryan> Soda City has probably some of the nicest and best racers I've seen.

I think it is for everybody, every gender, every race, every age.

<Mark> We have this facility for the racers and really just kind of continuing a legacy of a lot of years, a lot of effort, a lot of energy for this great community.

It's continually evolving, and that's where we're at right now.

<Jimbo> The friendship is like no other.

It's awesome.

I really don't know how to explain it.

This is what we do.

♪ [hard rock music] ♪ >> Finally, we'll take a trip to a small town for some outdoor fun.

From our digital series Go For It!, we'll travel to the quaint town of Cross, South Carolina to a place that's quickly becoming a hot spot for anglers from all over the South.

♪ [soft music] ♪ >> Take a look around friends.

Today, we are in an outdoor lover's paradise.

You can do everything here from boating to camping, hiking and biking, all of the outdoor things.

So, if you like to get away from the noise and just be in nature, this is the place to do it.

Where are we exactly?

We're at Blacks Camp in Cross, South Carolina about halfway in between Columbia and Charleston where South Carolina's Great Lakes lie.

Lakes Marion and Moultrie are actually surrounded by parks, trails, a wildlife refuge and make the perfect backdrop for all things, outdoor adventure.

But their claim to fame is actually world class fishing.

And since I have never caught a fish, I'm hoping that today is going to be the day.

Let's go for it!

♪ [soft music] ♪ Alright, y'all, here is Bobby with Blacks Camp.

He's actually going to be helping us out today.

Where are you taking me today, Bobby?

<Bobby> We're on Lake Moultrie, the lower lake of two lakes.

Lake Marion's the upper one.

We're going to be going 20 minutes out, fishing the Sunken Islands.

<Devyn> Oh!

That sounds fun.

So, what do you think we might catch today?

<Bobby> We're going to target catfish.

<Devyn> Catfish?

>> Yeah, what this lake is known for, <Devyn> It's known for catfish.

Let's go for it.

♪ [upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ <Devyn> So, catfish will eat this?

<Bobby> They eat the whole thing.

<Devyn> Oh, my goodness!

How big are these catfish going to be?

<Bobby> You want to reel it back, like you're throwing.

<Devyn> Okay.

<Bobby> And as you throw, gradually... See how the...

I'm just putting my thumb barely on the line just like that, letting it easily spool out.

Give it a try.

<Devyn> [nervously] Oh!

<Bobby> Don't hit me!

[Devyn and Bobby laugh] <Devyn> Okay.

Alright.

So, unlock.

<Bobby> Put it behind that shoulder, uh-huh, and aim.

<Devyn> Aim?

I'm going to give it a shot.

If I mess up, we can try again, right?

[laughing] I'm not very good at this.

<Bobby> You didn't go too far, but you didn't burn this one either.

So that's a plus.

<Devyn> If at first you don't succeed, which we did not, we'll try, try again.

♪ [bluegrass music] ♪ ♪ <Bobby> Don't be afraid of it.

Yeah.

<Devyn> We're getting a bite.

<Bobby> Get him, get him, get him!

<Devyn> Ohhhh!

<Bobby> Come on, you got to go!

I think he's on there.

<Devyn> Oh, yeah, he is.

Okay.

Okay.

<Bobby> Keep reeling.

Keep reeling.

<Devyn> Okay.

<Bobby> Turn that handle.

<Devyn> Ohhhh!

Oh, my!

[Devyn screams] <Bobby> Ohhhh!

We had one.

We lost him.

[Devyn laughs] <Bobby> Come on, man!

<Devyn> Oh, no!

And I reeled so hard.

I reeled so hard.

Man!

♪ <Bobby> First attempt.

You get three tries on my boat, okay?

<Devyn> I get three tries?

We're getting a bite.

<Bobby> Get him, get him, get him, get him!

Reel, reel, reel!

<Devyn> This is a work out.

<Bobby> Where's he going?

<Devyn> Ohhhh!

[shrieking] Whew, oh my goodness!

[laughs] <Bobby> That's a good one.

<Devyn> Look at that!

Oh my goodness.

<Bobby> You want to touch him?

<Devyn> Yeah.

Can I?

<Bobby> Yeah, Yeah.

These bigger ones you can.

Yeah, yeah.

<Devyn> Is this catch and release?

<Bobby> Yeah, yeah!

We'll release him back today.

<Devyn> We did it!

We did it!

I did it!

<Bobby> Hold him up.

[Devyn screams] <Bobby> You want to release him?

<Devyn> Okay.

Yeah.

[water splashing] Y'all today was so much fun.

Oh, my goodness!

What a great way to vacation.

The next time that you are wanting to be outside, please, please come out on the water at Blacks Camp in Cross, South Carolina with Bobby.

What a wild experience.

I'm so glad that I gave fishing a try for the first time.

And the next time that you're thinking about trying something new, just go for it.

♪ For more stories about our state and more details on the stories you've just seen, do visit our website at PalmettoScene.org, and of course, don't forget to follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @SCETV #PalmettoScene.

For all of us here at ETV and Palmetto Scene , I'm Beryl Dakers.

Good night, and thanks for watching.

♪ Hi, I'm Michael Bradley and welcome to Stono River County Park.

The public has a need and a desire for open space and preserved land, and Charleston County Parks wants to provide safe, family friendly, fun outdoor space.

♪ That's a mile and a half trail from the trail head where the restrooms are.

It does have a beautiful walk over a wonderful marsh view, a 1,000 foot boardwalk that takes you out to an island into the Stono River where there's a nice nature trail that goes around that island.

It is an unmanned facility.

It serves as a bit of a destination for the West Ashley Greenway, and those that like to bike and run and walk on that greenway, kind of an end point where there are some restrooms, water, there's even a bike repair station and a little place to picnic.

We are right along the Stono River, so you're going to see all kinds of marsh life.

It has been very popular for birding.

There's been all sorts of birds out here in the marsh flying over the island.

It's a wonderful park.

We hope everybody continues to enjoy it, Please come see us.

♪ [music fades] ♪ ♪ [closing music] ♪