#88: Hootie and the Blowfish, the "Holy City", and a Walking Tour of Downtown Newberry
For South Carolina history lovers far and wide! Enjoy weekly SC history and upcoming SC historical events
Welcome to the first 100 days of the South Carolina History Newsletter! My name is Kate Fowler and I live in Greenville, SC. I have a 9-5 job in marketing, and outside of work, have a deep love of history. I started this newsletter as a passion project to learn more about our beautiful state and build a community of fellow SC history lovers along the way! To establish a foundation for the newsletter and to grow my expertise on a wide variety of South Carolina historical topics, this past February I challenged myself to post 100 newsletters in 100 days. After this coming May 20th, the newsletter will become weekly. Thank you for joining the journey!
Dear reader,
Welcome to Newsletter #88 of The South Carolina History Newsletter! I’m so happy you’re here.
As always, I’d like to also extend a special welcome to the following new subscribers — woohoo! Thank you for subscribing.
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I hope you enjoy today’s newsletter, and as always, please feel free to reply to this email with your ideas and suggestions on South Carolina history topics you’d like to learn more about. I’m only a click away.
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And now, let’s learn some South Carolina history!
Yours truly,
Kate
(Writing from Greenville, SC)
➳ Featured SC History Event
Please enjoy our featured SC History Event below, and click here to visit my SC History Events Calendar that organizes all the upcoming SC history events I have discovered. Please let me know if you’d like to add an event to the calendar! Reply to this email or send me a note at schistorynewsletter@gmail.com.
Saturday, May 11th at 11:00 and 2:00 pm | “2nd Saturday Walking Tour of Downtown Newberry” | Starting at the Newberry Museum | Newberry, SC | FREE
“Join us at The Newberry Museum for our “Second Saturday Walk” with Ernie Shealy as he guides you on a walking tour through downtown Newberry. The walking tours will begin at 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM with the starting point at the museum. Wear comfortable walking shoes and bring a bottle of water. Guided Tour & Admission to Museum is FREE. In case of rain, there will be a presentation held at the museum on the history of downtown Newberry.”
➳ SC History Fun Facts
I.
Did you know that the rock/pop group sensation Hootie and The Blowfish started in a dorm room at the University of South Carolina?
According to South Carolina Public Radio, one day a student at the University of South Carolina named Mark Bryan heard fellow student Darius Rucker singing in a dorm shower and asked him to form a band… and the rest is history!
Founded in 1986, the band Hootie and the Blowfish emerged as the most popular rock band on the University of South Carolina college scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The band features lead singer and rhythm guitarist Darius Rucker (b. 1966 in Charleston), lead guitarist Mark Bryan (b. 1967 in Silver Spring, Maryland), drummer Jim Sonefeld (b. 1964 in Lansing, Michigan), and bassist Dean Felber (b. 1967 in Bethesda, Maryland).
Where did the name Hootie and the Blowfish come from? As the story goes, the band’s lead singer and Charlestonian Darius Rucker was inspired by the nicknames of 2 of his college friends. One friend wore huge glasses that made him look like an owl and the other friend had puffy cheeks that made him look like a blowfish. One night, these two friends walked into a campus party and Darius Rucker yelled, “Look! Hootie and the Blowfish!” And the name stuck.
Hootie and the Blowfish grew into a national phenomenon with the release of their major label debut, Cracked Rear View, in 1994 on Atlantic Records.
The album’s sales started slowly but exploded in 1995 following the release of the popular radio hits “Hold My Hand,” “Let Her Cry,” and “Only Want to Be with You.”
The album became one of the best-selling recordings in popular music history, selling more than 15 million copies in the United States by 2002.
Let’s go down Hootie and the Blowfish musical memory lane…
Marked by Rucker’s soulful singing, and the group’s chiming acoustic guitar and sing-along lyrics, “Hootie” (as the band came to be known) would continue to have success, but not at same level as their first record.
In 1996, the band won 2 Grammy Awards for Best New Artist and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
The band’s second album, Fairweather Johnson (1996), reached the number one spot on all music charts, as did its predecessor, but sold only about 3 million copies.
Their next albums were Musical Chairs (1998) and Scattered, Smothered, and Covered (2000), which each “garnered respectable reviews if not impressive sales figures.”
Nevertheless the band continued to make music, releasing their 4th album Hootie and the Blowfish in 2003 and a “best of” record in 2004 while touring and making national TV appearances.
In 1996, the group performed a live, nationally televised concert for MTV Unplugged on The Horseshoe of the University of South Carolina campus. Here is a video from the concert:
Also in 1996, the band also helped Columbia, SC obtain the annual Farm Aid concert, starring country singer Willie Nelson and others.
The band played for President Bill Clinton’s second inaugural ball in Washington.
Known for their friendly personalities, the band still “sometimes hangs out at the same Five Points bars where they played some of their first concerts, sipping beer and greeting fans.”
Please scroll to the bottom of this email for my source for this section
Have you seen Hootie and the Blowfish or Darius Rucker in concert? How was it? Please leave a comment below!
II.
Is the nickname “Holy City” an accurate nickname for Charleston?
On websites, in shops, on merchandise, and more, Charleston has become synonymous with its nickname “The Holy City.” But where does this nickname come from? And is it accurate? The answer is not so simple.
For this section, I turned to Charleston’s favorite historian Dr. Nic Butler, Ph.D., whose article “The Myth of the Holy City” attempts to answer these questions.
Most believe that the term “Holy City” is used to celebrate the notion that Charleston has been a place of religious freedom since its founding in 1670 and has become home to a large number of houses of worship.
Dr. Butler explains that religious freedom in Charleston’s history is a complicated topic that has become obscured over the years.
We cannot understand the religious landscape of Charleston’s founding years without understanding the religious upheaval that was simultaneously occurring in Europe at the time, especially in England.
A seminal event of the 1500s was The Protestant Reformation, which was “the withdrawal of English churches from the traditional church hierarchy in Rome.”
In 1534, King Henry VIII declared himself (with the help of Parliament) to be “the supreme ruler of a separate branch of Christianity that was tailor-made for his country, called the Church of England, or the Anglican Church.”
From that moment on, there was deep religious strife between English-speaking followers of The Church of England and followers of the Catholic Church of Rome. The struggle “dominated English politics during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and it spilled over into the founding of her American colonies as well.”
Dr. Butler explains:
“In this environment, one’s religious beliefs had powerful political implications. England’s ruling monarch was the head of state as well as the supreme head of the Church of England. This duality created a direct link between the concepts of religious conformity and national security. The question of the day was this: Is it possible to be loyal to the nation while rejecting the Church of England? Or to put it another way, was adherence to the Anglican Religion a civil requirement to be imposed on all members of the English-speaking world? Intense debates and disagreements over this mater led England into a destructive Civil War in the 1640s that spilled over into Ireland as well as England’s overseas colonies (Barbados, Virginia, Massachusetts, etc.). The Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660 included a restoration of the legal supremacy of the Church of England, however, and the nation returned to a state of relative stability.”
In the Carolina Charter of 1663, King Charles II granted the 8 Lords Proprietors dominion over all churches in Carolina and commanded the proprietors “to cause them to be dedicated and consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of our kingdom of England.”
The Carolina charter also recognized that “it may happen that some of the people and inhabitants of the said province cannot, in their private opinions, conform to the public exercise of religion according to the liturgy, forms, and ceremonies of the Church of England, or take and subscribe the oaths and articles made and established in that behalf.” In such cases of non-conformity, therefore, the King instructed that “all and every such person and persons may, from time to time, and at all times, freely and quietly have and enjoy his and their Judgments and consciences, in matters of religion, throughout all the said province or colony.”
Dr. Butler argues that the clauses above likely came out of rising tensions resulting from the “Test Acts” instituted in England in the 1660s and 1670s which required “anyone holding a public office to take a series of oaths to acknowledge the supremacy of the Church of England, to reject the tenants of the Catholic faith, and to receive communion periodically within an Anglican Church.”
With this being the political reality of England at the time, the king expected the inhabitants of the Carolina colony to conform to the laws of the Church of England.
Those unwilling to confirm would be “tolerated” but would not be able to “enjoy the same civil rights and privileges” afforded to confirming Protestants.
Before the English colonists arrived in Charleston, the Lords Proprietors created The Fundamental Constitutions, which made it clear that the Church of England was intended to “dominate the religious landscape of the new colony.”
Dr. Butler shows that The Fundamental Constitutions Article No. 97 notes that the natives of Carolina were “utterly strangers to Christianity,” but the colonists should not use such “idolatry, ignorance, or mistake” as an excuse to mistreat the Indians. If fact, the Proprietors advised, the natives, as well as “Jews, heathens, and other dissenters from the purity of Christian religion,” should be welcomed in Carolina, so they might witness the majesty of the Church of England, and have “an opportunity of acquainting themselves with the truth and reasonableness of its doctrines, and the peaceableness and inoffensiveness of its professors, [and] may, by good usage and persuasion, and all those convincing methods of gentleness and meekness, suitable to the rules and design of the gospel, be won over to embrace and unfeignedly receive the truth.”
French Huguenots began arriving in Charleston in the 1680s, fleeing religious persecution as Protestants in Catholic France. However, the Huguenot faith, although Protestant, did not confirm to the rules of the Church of England. Dr. Butler writes about early Huguenots in South Carolina:
“Here the Huguenots could form their own church and worship in peace, but their civil rights were likewise abridged by the ingrained legal prejudice against non-conforming Protestants. In response to this inequity, many of the early South Carolina Huguenots aligned themselves with the Church of England. Henry Laurens and Peter Manigault, among many other examples, became important political leaders, but such success required their families to make a religious compromise in order to circumvent South Carolina’s culture of discrimination.”
With a “pro-Church of England” agenda in place in the early colony, there was also an “anti-Catholic” agenda.
In the early days of the colony, there were very few Irish people. Irish people were not welcomed to the colony if they were Catholic. In general, the English viewed the “Catholic Island of Ireland with an abundance of suspicion and contempt.” The laws of England and most of England’s colonies afforded no civil liberties to Catholics.
The Church of England was the legally preferred religion of early South Carolina from the beginning, but it became the official church of the colony by the “Church Acts” of 1704 and 1706. At that time, there were just 4 churches in urban Charleston: one Anglican (St. Philip’s), one Congregational, one Huguenot (French Protestant), and one Baptist. Anglicans formed a minority of the town’s population of approximately 2,000 inhabitants, but in the spring of 1711, the provincial legislature endorsed a plan to “construct a grand new church” for the urban parish of St. Philip that “would express the majestic dominance of the Church of England in the capital of South Carolina.”
In speaking about the religious lives of these various groups of people who came to live in South Carolina in its founding years, Dr. Butler notes that we must also look at the enslaved population. White European settlers began bringing enslaved African workers to Charleston in 1670, and by 1708, they formed “a majority of the local population.”
Evidence of the spiritual opinions and practices of enslaved workers from Africa from this time is “non-existent” but it is likely that many slaves were raised in the Islamic faith. However, “the brutal realities of their new lives here made it next to impossible for them to preserve their native traditions.” White slave owners saw their slaves as “uncivilized savages” and religious instruction to enslaved people followed a Protestant agenda and emphasized “Old Testament lessons of obedience and stoicism.”
At the same time, Spanish clerics in nearby Florida were actively converting both Indians and Africans to Catholicism, and rewarding such converts with freedom from slavery. This path to liberty induced many enslaved men and women “to flee from South Carolina in the hope of reaching Spanish Florida, and provided white authorities in Charleston with further reasons to distrust anyone who practiced the Catholic faith.”
With this religious backdrop in place and bringing us to the 20th century, Dr. Butler traces the earliest uses of the phrase “Holy City” for Charleston. He finds it mentioned by newspaper columnist Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. (under the pen name “Ashley Cooper”) in the News and Courier in the 1950s. Through Gilbreth Jr.’s prolific writings, the nickname “Holy City” took off.
In his final argument, Dr. Butler brings it home that the nickname “Holy City” — though beautiful — is false:
“The idea that the phrase “Holy City” is based on Charleston’s long legacy of religious freedom and its proliferation of diverse houses of worship is simply a myth. The name is a product of twentieth century marketing, and was originally used as a metaphor for a certain obsession with the city of Charleston and its history. To assert that Charleston is called “the Holy City” because its inhabitants have enjoyed the privileges of religious freedom since its founding is to ignore the sobering facts of our discriminatory past. The early inhabitants of this community—black and white, enslaved and free—suffered varying degrees of religious persecution under a system of laws and cultural practices inherited from England. Rather than religious freedom, Charleston was founded on a system of limited and conditional religious toleration.”
Please scroll to the bottom of this email for my sources for this section
Please leave a comment below!
➳ Quote from an SC historical figure
“With a little love and some tenderness
We'll walk upon the water
We'll rise above the mess
With a little peace and some harmony
We'll take the world together
We'll take 'em by the hand
'Cause I've got a hand for you
Oh, 'cause I wanna run with you."
— Lyrics from “Hold My Hand” song by Hootie and the Blowfish
Hootie and the Blowfish article sources:
Richard, Alan. “Hootie and the Blowfish.” South Carolina Encyclopedia, https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/hootie-and-the-blowfish/. Accessed 8 May 2024.
Walthall, Catherine. “Behind the Band Name: Hootie & the Blowfish.” American Songwriter, 18 August 2022, https://americansongwriter.com/behind-the-band-name-hootie-the-blowfish/. Accessed 8 May 2024.
“The inside Story of Hootie and the Blowfish” South Carolina Public Radio, 31 October 2022, https://www.southcarolinapublicradio.org/podcast/walter-edgars-journal/2022-10-31/the-inside-story-of-hootie-and-the-blowfish. Accessed 8 May 2024.
Charleston “Holy City” article sources:
Butler, Nic. “The Myth of the Holy City.” Charleston County Public Library, 24 Jan. 2020, https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-time-machine/myth-holy-city. Accessed 8 May 2024.
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