One Saturday afternoon back in 1978, Mickey Watson and Andy Hagen were sitting in the living room of Mickey's trailer in the Cozy Corner Trailer Park in Lonesome Pines, N.C., when their friend Freddie Dobbs came bursting through the door.

Freddie had been down to North Myrtle Beach, where he'd bought some new records.

"Y'all gotta hear this," he said, holding up a copy of the double-record "Waiting for Columbus," a live album by the band Little Feat.

Mickey got up and turned off the college football game on his 20-inch RCA, while Andy fetched some beer from the refrigerator. They settled in, the record began to spin, and the bong went around a few times. When all four sides had played, the three friends sat back in amazement, truly blown away by what they'd heard.

Now, as fate would have it, Andy, who's a fine mandolin player, got up and pulled out a beat-up old copy of "Tragic Songs of Life" by The Louvin Brothers and put it on the turntable. With "Spanish Moon," "Dixie Chicken" and "Sailin" Shoes" still reverberating in their brains, Mickey, Andy, and Freddie were all of a sudden set adrift in the in the traditional mountain sounds of "Katie Dear," "Knoxville Girl," and "Let Her Go, God Bless Her."

Continue to part 2.

HOMEHISTORYSONGSINTERVIEWSCONTACT