Episode 3903

- [Announcer] "Tennessee Crossroads" is brought to you in part by:

- [Narrator] Some of our biggest checks have also made the biggest difference. The Tennessee Lottery, proud to have raised more than $7.5 billion for education. Now that's some game-changing, life-changing fun.

- [Announcer] Discover Tennessee Trails and Byways, where adventure, cuisine, history come together. With 16 scenic driving trails, you can discover why Tennessee sounds perfect. Trips can be planned at TNTrailsAndByways.com.

- [Narrator] The Co-op system in Tennessee consists of independently owned Co-ops, driven to serve farmer-owners, rural lifestyle customers, and their communities throughout Tennessee and in five neighboring states. More at ourcoop.com.

- [Announcer] Middle Tennessee State University College of Liberal Arts helps students explore the world, engage minds, enrich lives, and earn a living. More at MTSU.edu/CLA.

- This week on "Tennessee Crossroads," we'll binge on bagels, explore a bit of Middle Tennessee history, see what's on the menu in Uzbekistan, and get to know a grandma who knew how to rock. Even Elvis would be proud. I'm Miranda Cohen. Thank you so much for joining. And we mean, thank you, thank you very much. Our first story started in Albania, landed in New York City, and wound up here in Music City. It's the age-old story: a boy meets girl, meets bagel. Vicki Yates explains how Benji's Bagel and Coffee House came to be.

- Bagels might not have originated in Tennessee, but they've settled in pretty well. According to a recent survey, 61% of Americans choose a bagel for breakfast at least twice a week. And if that number sounds high, just drop by Benji's Bagels and Coffee Shop. On any given morning, you'll see people from near and far stopping by for a big bite to eat. Nico and Becca Bendaj are creators and owners of the business, named after their son. Who doesn't love a bagel? Well, believe it or not, one of the owners of Benji's Bagels here in West Nashville didn't even know what a bagel was.

- Before I moved to the United States, I didn't know what a bagel was, to be honest with you. I didn't know what a bagel was. Although Albanians generally love bread. We love bread, we eat bread a lot. Bread is part of our life, daily lives, but never heard about the bagel. Then I met Becca in 2013, and that's how she introduced me to bagels. She was like, "Why don't we eat a bagel?" That was in Lower Manhattan, Lower East Side. So we went, and we ate a bagel, and I was not impressed with it. Every Saturday or Sunday, we'll go to a bagel shop in Astoria, New York. And the bagel started growing on me, and I started liking. So it was one of those things that we'd go to this bagel shop in New York City, and it was a bagel shop for everybody. You'll see teachers, firefighters, policemen, everybody would come there. So it was one of those things that you were like, it was not just the bagel itself, but the community. And I started enjoying the bagels. And then in 2016, I started making bagels at home. Just like, started rolling bagels, rolling the dough. And that's how I got involved with the bagels, and I start liking them.

- [Vicki] And while they were married and living in New York with 16-month-old Benji, they came to the conclusion that New York just might be too expensive for a young family. Meanwhile, Nico's friend encouraged them to come to Nashville, and Nico and Becca discussed it.

- He mentioned, "You know, if I get a job, do you think you wanna move to Nashville?" And I was like, "Well, you're my home. Let's just move wherever we wanna go." And Nashville has been a very nice blessing. Community is a big thing to us, and that's one of the reasons we love the restaurant industry in Nashville. In New York City, it's what's hot, what's trending, what's bougie, what's expensive. Nashville is all about local businesses and families. And I think that that is the most important thing and the best thing that we did, to move here. Well, I actually went to culinary school for savory, and now I just bake, which is hilarious. You ask me to put, you know, new sandwiches on the menu or do specific things, and I'm like, "All right, let's do it. New muffin, that kind of thing. It comes with a couple tries where I'm like, "Okay, now, now we've got something."

- [Vicki] And now their bagels are attracting a steady clientele. All of their bagels are hand-rolled and boiled, much like a traditional New York bagel.

- [Nico] I don't wanna say we know how to make it better, but we wanted to bring a New York-style bagel. So we source all our equipment from New York, particularly the major equipments, the kettle boiler, where we boil all our bagels. We bake the bagels on stones. So all the little things that we try to do to maintain that.

- [Vicki] There are, of course, plain bagels, everything bagels, rosemary bagels, za'atar bagels, jalapeno bagels. And they keep working on new bagels as well. And don't forget about the schmears. There's feta and olive, mixed berry, lemon caper. And not exactly sure what you want? Ask to sample them.

- [Nico] Becca, actually, she curated the whole menu. I was just doing the bagels. She, being a chef as she is, she went to the Culinary Institute of America. She actually came up with all these flavors of cream cheeses and how the bagel and cream cheese would work together. But not only that, but how the sandwiches would work together. So the cream cheese is a very, very big part of the bagel. But it's not only that, it's also the whole experience. From the staff, from the people who walk through the door, we're welcoming them and offering good food, fresh food every day."

- [Becca] You can put a lot into a product and get negative feedback from it. But, you know, we go in day in, day out, working so much. And the greatest way to know that it's all for something is just positive feedback, people loving our stuff as much as we love it.

- Becca and I, we put so much love and dedication in this space. And we, two little kids, there was the... You know, coming here, particularly the first six months when we opened, we were here together from, like, 4:00 a.m. My mom was taking care of the kids at home. She moved from New York to stay here with us for eight months. So, you know, just being here and the dedication, I think that's personally... And people see that, right? You can't fake that. That's one of the things... You can't fake, like, empathy, and you can't fake, like, the love for your product and what you do.

- Thanks, Vicki. It's not unusual for the big city museums to get all of the attention, but sometimes the smaller county museums offer some of the best walks through Tennessee history. Laura Faber visited the Robertson County History Museum recently and found out it's far from a little closet full of artifacts.

- [Laura] Just off the pretty town square of Springfield, a stone's throw from the courthouse, sits a beautiful building that's packed with history. What was the original post office back in the early 1900s is now the Robertson County History Museum and has been since 1998.

- And we're not just a dusty old museum. We're dedicated to preserving our history, preserving our artifacts, and becoming an educational center for not only the Robertson County people or citizens but also the students.

- [Laura] Danny Atchley is president of the Robertson County Historical Society. He says what visitors will first notice is the architecture of the building. Constructed in academic Roman revival style, it boasts arched windows, brass handrails, and a gorgeous terrazzo floor bordered by rose-colored Tennessee marble.

- [Danny] People come in, and they look at... Especially that lobby, they look, and they go, "Oh, wow. This is something. This is just special."

- [Laura] This museum also has everything that is Robertson County, from the Civil War to agriculture, Main Street, Springfield, whiskey, and tobacco, specifically dark-fired tobacco.

- [Danny] It's still kind of controversial, I guess you'd say. Robertson County wouldn't be where we are right now without tobacco. It was a cash crop. It was always grown here. The unique thing about Springfield and Robertson County is we're one of the few counties in the country that grows dark-fired tobacco. Now, dark fired tobacco is a unique tobacco crop, and it takes special soil, which is found here.

- [Laura] Dark-fired tobacco is used in chewing tobacco and snuff, not cigarettes, but it does smoke.

- [Danny] In the fall, tobacco farmers will bring the tobacco in, and they'll hang it inside these barns, and then they will light sawdust, which will smoke to the tobacco that's hanging there and gives it a unique color and also a unique flavor. Oftentimes, when people that are new to the area, they'd be driving down the highway and they see a barn off the road and see smoke coming out of it, and they would stop and tell whoever lived there, "Your barn's on fire."

- [Laura] Janet Palmore is the operations manager of the museum.

- We are recognized by the state as one of the top museums because we do, you know, carry such rich history here.

- She says visitors definitely gravitate toward a couple areas of the museum. All right, Janet, this exhibit is interesting to people why? What are we looking at?

- We're looking at some of the tobacco exhibit we have here at the museum, and it is so popular because we're from Robertson County, and we're known as the world's largest dark-fired tobacco. And a lot of people here, their family and grandparents and stuff, have grown tobacco. And it's still known throughout the parts of Robertson County. I find the 1892 Winchester night rider gun right here to be pretty, you know, neat to see, because it's one of the guns that would've been used during the night riders' time. This is just a replica of a tobacco barn, that if you're riding around Robertson County, you're definitely gonna see them, and they're gonna be smoking around fall time.

- [Laura] Which means there's tobacco.

- [Janet] There's tobacco in it.

- [Laura] Another popular exhibit tells the story of the Wessyngton Plantation.

- Wessyngton Plantation was made up of thousands and thousands of acres. It was settled by the Washington family, and they were cousins of George Washington, the first president of the United States. And they settled there on a land grant and amassed to all this property. And, of course, you know, tobacco was king. They started raising huge amounts of tobacco. Tobacco is very labor-intensive, even to this day. And so they unfortunately had to have a lot of manpower. And in those days, it was slave power. And Wessyngton Plantation, just prior to Civil War, had almost 300 enslaved people that lived and worked there.

- For years, the exhibit remained the same, but it's about to be updated thanks to local author and resident, John Baker Jr. He saw this photo in a textbook while in school and came to learn that he was related to that family, one of many enslaved on the plantation. What he found on the journey into his past will be on display here. This is the existing exhibit of Wessyngton Plantation, one of the largest tobacco plantations in the country. But this is about to change. What's coming?

- We are going to tell the rest of the story. What happened to the formerly enslaved people of Wessyngton Plantation after the Civil War ended? Well, first thing they did, they started building churches. Second thing they started to do was build schools. Third thing they started to do was buy property so they could become landowners. And then the fourth thing, those people that left Wessyngton Plantation started their own businesses. Many of them right here in Springfield.

- [Laura] The goal has always been to preserve the history of Robertson County, and you can find it inside the small town museum, with big and important history lessons.

- [Janet] I love working here because you get to meet new people, and you get to meet the little ones that's coming in on a field trip. And you're someone who plants a seed that may make them grow, you know, into a historian as well.

- [Danny] We're very proud of what we do, and we're very proud of what we preserve.

- Thanks, Laura. We've been to a ton of great restaurants around the state, and we've had our fair share of barbecue, catfish, and even fried chicken. Well, last year, Joe Elmore found an award-winning restaurant that brings inspiration and ingredients from faraway places like Uzbekistan to little old Nashville. It's called OSH Restaurant & Grill.

- [Joe] You'll find OSH Restaurant & Grill in a little shopping center off Thompson Lane. Once inside, you'll be transported to an exotic world of Uzbek cuisine, full of delicious flavors from the heart of Central Asia. Before unleashing our appetites, though, a little history's in order. Uzbekistan is a landlocked country in Central Asia with about 36 million people. It sits along the Silk Road, an ancient trading route linking Asian, Middle Eastern, and European cultures. It was part of the former Soviet Union until gaining independence in 1991. OSH was opened in 2020 by brothers Sean and Shane Shamansurov. Both came to Nashville 20 years earlier to study at MTSU. But it should be no surprise that the restaurant business would come calling. They were well equipped for the challenge.

- We love cooking, and also, you know, me having five kids and my brother having six kids, we always have something cooking at home at all times.

- [Joe] They're also following a family tradition started by their father, who imported this special oven for cooking the signature dish of the house, osh. It all starts with a liquid base filled with yellow and orange carrots, onions, garlic, and other ingredients.

- We put chickpeas. We have cumin that's also imported. We import yellow carrots. So basically, in osh, we put both red and yellow, mostly yellow, and we don't find yellow carrots in the stores here in Tennessee.

- [Joe] Next comes the rice, which is also imported from Uzbekistan. Now the whole mixture will simmer until most of the juices have been absorbed. Finally, there's the lamb, a generous portion topping off this renowned dish. And finally, a hard-boiled quail egg.

- Ready to go.

- [Joe] Another menu, specialty is the lamb manti, steamed seasoned dumplings filled with meat, onions, spices, served with yogurt, which, by the way, is made in-house.

- [Sean] We buy whole milk. We boil the milk and we make the yogurt here. My mom makes it.

- Well, it looks like a pretty good way to start our adventure in Uzbek cuisine. Got some fresh homemade bread here, a lamb somsa, and a little sampler platter here to get us going, and, well, the osh should be coming out anytime now. Oh. Thank you, there, Sean.

- Here's the osh. With quail eggs, artichoke salad, and a homemade yogurt.

- Wow.

- [Sean] There are a lot of food back home. We couldn't, you know, we can't fit all the food on the menu. We just cherry-picked what's most popular, what we think people would like the most. So we'll put it on the menu. So far, everything been selling, everything been popular, and everybody's been loving it.

- [Joe] So much that Yelp named OSH one of the top 10 restaurants in the entire USA.

- [Sean] When I heard the news, Yelp called me; they said, "Hey, you're number nine." I said, "That's great." I said, you know, "It's within the city?" "No, no, it's within the country." But that's when we got real surprised.

- Each dish is different, but it's so good. You just can't have enough. Every time I come in, I have some of the appetizers, some of the main course. And I have to have the dessert after.

- Oh, this is the lamb chops. Lamb chops, and they are the best. I can't eat lamb chops anywhere but here; he has spoiled me. I mean, these are incredible.

- We've been blessed to be here in Middle Tennessee, just living here, going to school, having business, and having great customers and who really appreciate our food and home cooking. Is there anything that I can get for you?

- Good. Thank you.

- Awesome. Enjoy your meal.

- And finally, we'll flash back to 1991 with a Tennessee guitar legend. Cordell Jackson was a rock and roll pioneer who blazed her own trail through the male-dominated rock scene of the 1950s. Jana Stanfield tells the story of this rock and roll granny.

- So I'm doing my sound check... Hello, hello, hello. And I hear this woman's voice.

- Watch that last chord! I'll show you.

- She grabbed a guitar, and then she started rocking. No, I mean rocking.

- [Jana] Meet Cordell Jackson.

- You're pretty good. Not!

- Madonna, move over. Make room for Memphis's rock and roll granny: 68-year-old Cordell Jackson. The commercial you just saw was not Cordell's first time on the tube. Her music video was aired on MTV and VH1, and it earned her a guest slot on "The David Letterman Show." Cordell Jackson was playing rock-and-roll guitar when rock-and-roll began. She can still remember at age 12, getting in trouble when her father heard her playing a rock-and-roll version of "Red River Valley." That didn't stop her, though. She's still rocking at churches, conventions, and college campuses. In Memphis, you'll often find her at a well-known rocker's night spot called the Antenna Club.

- Welcome to the beautiful Antenna Club. And at this time, it's my distinct pleasure to introduce to you a woman who drives a yellow Cadillac and plays a red flame guitar. The woman who put Budweiser on the map, Miss Cordell Jackson.

- [Jana] Cordell Jackson's notoriety began long before her television fame. In fact, it began before television.

- My dream as a child, to play on the radio. That was all there was. And since then, there has been television, and here we are.

- [Jana] Cordell Jackson is recognized by music historians as the first female recording engineer in the country. In 1956, she formed Moon Records, the oldest Memphis record label in continuous operation. Over the years, she estimates that she's written 400 to 700 songs. Describing Cordell Jackson's music is difficult, even for her.

- I've said it several different ways, from barnyard disaster to classical. You know, I play pretty well any type of music. And I write a lot of Christian music and produce Christian music. And I'm producing my first female artist in my 35-year history of Moon Records, and have written the songs, and my first country.

- [Jana] Cordell says the country record she's producing on singer Susan St. John won't be Nashville country, it will be Cordell Jackson, third-world country. Cordell's desire to express her individuality dates back to childhood, when her father spent $159 for her first guitar, a K Supreme.

- When I first started to play the guitar, I was told by a lot of people, adult people, 'cause I was only 12 years old, and they'd say little girls don't play the guitar as if they were shaming me. And I would just look 'em straight in the eye and say, "Well, I do." That was my answer. And as I came along in the record-making business, it was unheard of. And I certainly had it mashed out on me over and over and over and over and over, and it still occurs, but I've never let that touch me. I knew what I wanted to do. God gave me my life. He didn't give it to someone else, and I was always willing to live it. It's pretty simple.

- [Jana] Cordell Jackson was discovered for the commercial when two ad agency reps saw her video on public television in St. Louis. They came to see her perform, and within weeks, she was appearing with rocker Brian Setzer for the ad. What does she think now when she sees it?

- [Cordell] "Oh, that's me! Oh, really?" It leaves you. You forget it. And you will be sitting there in the ball game. You certainly want to see it. But by the time it's a third over, "hey, that's me." You know, it's funny how it affects you that way.

- [Jana] The ad has generated new generations of fans. Cordell has been surprised and delighted by the size of the crowds at her shows.

- I mean, it was raining. They were sitting there with the water just rolling off of them. Nobody out of the 4,000 people they said was there moved. And they stood one hour wet to get my autograph. And that's mind-boggling. But I love 'em for it, and I really appreciate that kind of expression.

- [Jana] Magazine writers have gone wild with articles on Cordell Jackson. She has been featured in magazines from The New Yorker to The Christian Science Monitor. Spin magazine named her one of its 35 guitar gods in its 35th anniversary of rock-and-roll issue. While some people her age may be thinking of slowing down, Cordell Jackson is enjoying her success and revving her engines for whatever comes next. Her goals for the future are simple:

- [Cordell] I've always been doing what I enjoy doing, and it's all been a happy life. Whatever comes, I want to handle it well and do it well. And whatever it is, I'm gonna be happy with it.

- What an inspirational lady. We hope we've inspired you to watch more of our stories at tennesseecrossroads.org or on the PBS app. And we hope you'll join us again next week for another show. You take care, and thanks for watching.

- [Announcer] Crossroads is brought to you in part by:

- [Narrator] Students across Tennessee have benefited from over $7.5 billion we've raised for education, providing more than two million scholarships and grants. The Tennessee Lottery, game-changing, life-changing fun.

- [Announcer] Discover Tennessee Trails and Byways, where adventure, cuisine, history come together. With 16 scenic driving trails, you can discover why Tennessee sounds perfect. Trips can be planned at TNTrailsAndByways.com.

- [Narrator] The Co-op system in Tennessee consists of independently owned Co-ops, driven to serve farmer-owners, rural lifestyle customers, and their communities throughout Tennessee and in five neighboring states. More at ourcoop.com.

- [Announcer] Middle Tennessee State University College of Liberal Arts helps students explore the world, engage minds, enrich lives, and earn a living. More at MTSU.edu/CLA.