“Well there’s four or five full-time barbecues and there’s no telling how many hundred pounds a week that’s sold, so barbecue is a whole lot of business in Chester County.” – Billy Frank Latham

Bill Latham’s Bar-B-Q
531 S. Church St.
Henderson, TN 38340
(901) 989-4075

The restaurant industry is recognized as tough work. Compared to the life of a farmer, Billy Frank Latham finds restaurant ownership to be quite easy.

Billy Frank grew up on a farm just six miles outside of Henderson. The son of farmers, he was a farmer himself just a decade ago. But like so many independent farmers, he could not compete with big agribusinesses and had to end this career.  He always loved to eat barbecue, so decided to give it a try, investing in a long-established pit-house.

In a novel twist to the barbecue sandwich, Billy Frank adds sauce to the meat before putting it on the bun; he then mixes sauce and pork to form a patty. He says customers like that their barbecue doesn’t fall out of the bread.

We first visited Bill’s Bar-B-Q in 2003 as part of our initial foray into documenting rural Tennessee ‘cue. Visit the original Bill’s Bar-B-Q page.

What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Subject: Billy Frank Latham
Date: July 10, 2008
Location: Bill Latham’s Bar-B-Q – Henderson, TN
Interviewer & Photographer: Rien T. Fertel

-----

Rien T. Fertel: This is Rien Fertel with the Southern Foodways Alliance. It is just about 2:20 on Thursday, July 10, 2008. I am at Bill’s Barbecue with Billy Frank Latham in kind of center of Henderson, Tennessee, 531 South Church Street. I’d like to introduce Mr. Billy Frank. Please say your name and birth date.

Billy Frank Latham: I’m Billy Frank Latham. My birthday was December 3, 1939.

Okay; and as I understand, you were born in Chester County right here.

Yes; I sure were.

And what—what town or—or city were you born in?

Well actually I was some of the last ones that was born at home. I was out on a farm about six mile out of town.

And was it—was there a name of the farm community or town that the farm was in?

Yeah; New Friendship.

-----

Well I want to ask; why did you stop doing whole hog? I know you began doing it; why did you stop?

Difference in the weight of what you got to handle.

So a hog, I have heard, is 250 pounds.

Anywhere from about 180 up to about 250; it’s a whole hog.

Were you carrying them yourself? Was it a two man job?

Well I done a lot of it myself but I had another guy that helped me, and it was a lot of heavy work. And doing the hams and shoulders see about a 20-pound is all you got to handle at one time.

Were there any other negatives to cooking a whole hog every—every day or every few days?

Yes; sitting up all night with it.

You had to sit up all night?

You had—open pits you see works different from your electric smokers. And you have to stay with that open pit to—got to keep your temperature up and just right on it, and if you don't stay with it all the time you’ve got to run back to it and just have a little pit.

-----

How many different sauces do you offer here?

I got a mild, a hot, and a super-hot.

A super-hot, all right were—were these sauces of your own invention or did they carry over form the previous owner?

No; these actually are some that my son-in-law run Jacks Creek Barbecue and it’s actually that sauce but I modified it to my taste.

The super-hot, how often do people order that? I think you and Jacks Creek are the only people I’ve met who make a super-hot barbecue sauce?

You’ve got quite a few people that will use it when they find out you’ve got it. [Laughs] … You’ve got to really like hot sauce to eat it.

-----

Do you miss doing whole hog?

Not really; it’s—it’s just so much easier and simple to do the hams and shoulders that I—I wouldn’t go back to whole hog and it’s getting to where you couldn’t find a good whole hog to cook. … Big hog producers that raises thousands of head a year puts all of the little ones out ‘cause they couldn’t compete with it. … Well, your small time farmer has had to just get out of business for he can't compete with the—the larger ones that can grow so much more stuff than he could. And in fact I was one of them; I had to get out of farming. And before it got to where I was losing money at it I got out of it.

-----

Were there a lot more places doing barbecue 10 or 20 years ago than there are today?

No, not actually I guess it’s—it’s as many or more now than there was then. You just don't—you don't have none done out on the farm or anything like that anymore.

-----

Where do you think whole hog is going to go? Do you think there will always be someone doing it? Do you think it might disappear completely?

I think in the next few years you’ll only have just special occasions where you’ll have whole hog done on an open pit.

------

How long do you plan on being in the business? What—what are your plans?

‘Til I get to be an old man.

-----

Tell me about what barbecue means to Henderson and Chester County, Tennessee.

Well there’s four or five full-time barbecues and there’s no telling how many hundred pounds a week that’s sold, so barbecue is a whole lot of business in Chester County.

-----

To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

Southern BBQ Primer | Oral Histories | Blog | Interactive Map | More Trails | Contact