The Sullivan Family began performing as a band when it was invited to have a regular program on the first radio station in Jackson, Alabama, in 1949. But long before that its members had been playing traditional music. The family had settled near St. Stephens when it was the capital of the Alabama Territory.

   Through the decades, many family members played fiddles and provided music for frolics or country dances in the area. In 1939, when Arthur Sullivan converted to the Pentecostal faith and became a preacher, his family gave up "worldly" music and dedicated their musical talents to the Lord. His son Enoch still honors this commitment with bluegrass gospel music.

   Similarly Margie Brewster, who became Enoch's wife, was the daughter of a Pentecostal evangelist. After her father's death, she traveled the South with evangelist Hazel Chain, playing guitar and singing gospel music in her resonant alto voice.

   Throughout their long career the Sullivans have had two long-lasting and popular radio shows in Jackson and Thomasville, plus a highly-rated television program in Jackson, Mississippi. They have recorded scores of albums and performed at thousands of small churches around the world as well as at major bluegrass festivals in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands. Yet their delight in pleasing and inspiring audiences is still evident in their performances.

Bluegrass music is considered a form of American roots music with its own roots in the English, Irish and Scottish traditional music of immigrants from the British Isles (particularly the Scots-Irish immigrants of Appalachia), as well as the music of rural African-Americans, jazz, and blues. Like jazz, bluegrass is played with each melody instrument switching off, playing the melody in turn while the others revert to backing; this is in contrast to old-time music, in which all instruments play the melody together or one instrument carried the lead throughout while the others provide accompaniment.

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