Normally genteel PBS stations could be stormed next year by a bunch of long-haired, sweaty, snarling Southerners who bring with them a three-guitar attack and a heaping helping of attitude.

Blame, or credit, Jacksonville, home to a good number of those Southerners.

A three-part documentary, "The Soul of Southern Rock," is in development by Jacksonville's Pine Ridge Film & Television Inc., which has won six national Emmy awards and has already placed four series onto PBS lineups.

One episode could focus on the Jacksonville connection, on bands that either grew up or lived there through formative years: Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers Band, .38 Special, Molly Hatchet, Blackfoot and others, along with more modern acts such as Mofro and Derek Trucks. It could go back in time even further, to the black musicians who played in old LaVilla.

The other episodes would range across decades in the Southeast, exploring these questions: Why this area? Why this music?

Jerry Smith, CEO of Pine Ridge, said he's confident the Southern rock documentary will do well on PBS — and then on networks around the world. Southern rock isn't just a Southern thing, after all.

"I don't do a show unless my distributor has a good chance, or why bother?" he said. "The reaction we've had is bigger than anything we've ever had. We've been getting calls from all over the country."

Pine Ridge's shows have appeared on channels such as HGTV, the Discovery Travel Channel, Food Network, WE and DIY. It's produced PBS series "At the Chef's Table," "Getting Away Together," "Animal Attractions TV" and "Destination Craft."

Janson Media in New York has agreed to distribute the documentary series to PBS; in a letter to Smith, Stephen Janson, the company's president, said he could see it expanded to a series of eight or even 13 half-hour episodes, if the original is a success.

Pine Ridge was hired by the documentary's producers, First Coast Films, a partnership between Patrick J. Armstrong and Michael Ray FitzGerald.

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Armstrong is an Orlando real-estate developer who was a manager of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Molly Hatchet. Fitzgerald is a longtime rock guitarist and music producer in Jacksonville with a Ph.D. in media history. He's written "Swamp Music," a deep-dive into the music that's come out of North Florida, and has a contract with the University Press of Florida on a book with the working title, "Jacksonville and the Roots of Southern Rock."

Smith, from Pine Ridge, said he is now creating a trailer to show prospective sponsors; he has interviews done or lined up with old-timers in the scene as well as newer Southern rockers such as Charlie Starr, lead singer of the Blackberry Smoke, and sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell of Larkin Poe.

He's aiming to get the full series on the air in 2020.

There are plenty of people willing to talk for the documentary series. Getting rights to film footage and songs will be a massive challenge though, Smith said: "Huge, huge, enormous, the biggest I've ever tackled."

On the other hand, he expects that getting sponsors on board — a necessity for any PBS project — will be far easier than usual. "I think that's going to be overnight, for a change," Smith said.

Armstrong, the former Skynyrd manager, has seen the interest as well. "I keep getting phone calls from people who'd heard about it it, wanting to know when they can see it." he said. "There's just an inordinate amount of interest in it, to the point of people calling and saying: 'Hey, do you need us to put money together for this?'"

In the late 1960s, Armstrong was a teacher at Southside High School, in between college and law school, when he started booking teenage bands for dances and shows. "One day a kid came to my office and says, 'My name is Ronnie Van Zant and I've got a little band, we just changed our name from the One Percent to Leonard Skinner. We need someone to book us.' "

Soon he was booking tours for the band — quickly known as Lynyrd Skynyrd — around the Southeast, an early step for Armstrong in a long career spent in music.

Armstrong wants that story told in "The Soul of Southern Rock," a good bit of which will focus on Skynyrd's home town.

It's easy perhaps, to imagine the documentary's cameras will stop in a front of a couple of recent historical markers placed in front of the Van Zant house on the Westside and the Riverside Avenue house where the Allman Brothers held a legendary jam that solidified the band's membership.

"Jacksonville's going to be able to puff their chest out a little bit and say, we started this," Armstrong said.

FitzGerald, who's writing the book on Southern rock, said Jacksonville certainly became a focal point of the music that became popular in the early 1970s. But the genesis was in Memphis, where white musicians such as Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis looked to black blues musicians, to rock and rollers and to hillbilly musicians. Out of that, came Southern rock.

The music flourished in Jacksonville, where those who lived there and those who visited found a busy music scene and some hard-working musicians.

Lynyrd Skynyrd, FitzGerald said, often rehearsed more than 50 hours a week. "I don't see how that wouldn't be a major aspect to their success. The work ethic in Jacksonville was really really strong. These cats were serious."

That paid off: FitzGerald said that Skynyrd wasn't always the crack band it became, and it took its frontman to make that happen.

"Ronnie Van Zant willed it into existence," FitzGerald said. "This guy had a superhuman power of his mind."

Matt Soergel: (904) 359-4082