June 18, 2026 • 52 mins
To borrow from the late, great Waylon Jennings, Popcorn Sutton was just'a good ol' boy, never meanin' no harm. A modern day moonshiner, he was pretty much in trouble with the law since the day he was born. He was making his way the only way he knew how. Which was a little bit more than the law would allow. You get it.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hi, Sar Elizabeth.
Speaker 3 (00:05):
How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm doing pretty well about you?
Speaker 3 (00:07):
I am well good.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I like your striped pants. There's like things that they
give to like convicts in the nineteen thirties, a changing
very fun and ridiculous. It really is.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Thank you, Ridiculous Crimes. You know it's ridiculous, Oh man pants.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, you know how I like history, right, I do
know that, and I'm often reading about random things, and
so I went down this rabbit hole and I thought
i'd share it with you. So the founder of the
Chinese Han Empire, and it's like the ethnic honor the
largest majority in China. So when they basically took over
the area and launched the Han Empire, this was like
(00:46):
two O two BC, right, right, But the guy who
founded the Han Empire, the first emperor, was this guy
named Lou Bang or Liu Bang. Right now, if I apologize,
I'm not pronouncing that correctly, but it's my best I
got so Neo Bang. He was originally just not of
a nobility, royalty, nothing. It's just this regular guy and
(01:10):
he gets this job right, taking a bunch of penal
laborers like so I prisoned workers and he's supposed to
escort them from a construction site to this other new
construction site. And while they're going on the journey, some
of the prisoners escape, right, And according to Keen law
or you know qi n law, which was the previous empire,
(01:30):
if the prisoners escaped, he would be put to death
as the prison guard.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
They're like, you must have been on it. So what
does he do. He switches sides and he joins the rebels,
and they're like, man, this guy's good. He's a quick thinker.
They make him the leader. And so then from that
point on he joins what ends up being part of
the rebel army because there's all these warring states in
China at the time. So he joins his rebel army,
he works his way up and then he gets into it,
(01:55):
and then they win the fight, and he gets made like,
you know, one of the many kings of a province.
And then he leads an new revolution or rebellion against
against the guy who he who rebellion he was helping
defeats them in like two o two BC and thus
founds the Han Empire. So the whole Han Empire is
founded by a guy who was a prison guard who
when the prisoners escaped, He's like, I'm with you, fellas.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Prison guard to emperor. Yes, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And this is like the one like when we talk
about like China extends back. This is the point they're
talking about other than the Yellow Emperor, which is like
the real starting point. But this is like when the
Han Empire. So this is like, you know, China's history was.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Basically you're in the long haul.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I just love that story. I'm with you fellas, like
they're gonna kill me, so I guess I'm with you, Emperor. Boom, ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
That's ridiculous. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Fighting the revenuers?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Oh yeah, oh.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yeah, this is ridiculous Crime a podcast about absurd and
(03:10):
outrageous capers. Heis and cons It's always always ninety nine
percent murder free and one percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I know you always heard that we.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Talked about moonshiners before. Oh yeah, you have basically homemade
illegal liquor.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah, corn liquor, corn liquor.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
So when we talk about moonshine, we think about the
Appalachian region. That's the stronghold.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I think of my dad's family.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
You think your dad's family. Moon Shining in Appalachia has
a really rich and fascinating history. It's tied to the culture,
the economics, and that like rebel ethos of the communities.
They're outsiders and they know it and then they like
kind of revel in it.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yes, and it's also, by the way, as I pointed
out with my dad's family, this is true of Black
and White and the Apple Asian region. It's like the
re we all know.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, totally. So let's start with how Moonshine got its start.
Let me tell you, Saren Scott's Irish immigrants settled in
the region in the eighteenth century, and they brought with
them all these old traditions of distilling whiskey from their homelands.
So remember whiskey with an e is from Ireland or
(04:21):
the US whiskey with no e is from Scotland. Yes,
and as Mike Myers used to say in the old
SNL sketch, all things Scottish, if it's not Scottish, it's crap.
Because you know, the Scots aren't the biggest fans of
the English.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
I've heard this, Yeah, nor are the Irish.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
You know, the SNP Scottish National Party has called for
another independence referendum and the Scottish Parliament endorsed it. Labor
parties against it. So we shall see. And I've heard
over and over that Scotland and Catalonia will be the
tipping points in terms of independence in Europe, so like
if they leave the UK and Spain respectively, then all
(05:03):
these other areas will fill out suit. Anyway, let's go
back to the seventeen hundred Scott's Irish. They had already
been operating under a practice of defiance of British taxation,
and illegal distilleries were part of that. So in the US,
the first major flash point was in seventeen ninety one,
(05:24):
Alexander Hamilton pushed through this federal excise tax on whiskey
with any He wanted to find a way to pay
down all that Revolutionary War debt, and so in the
Appalachian region, whiskey wasn't like just some tipple that was currency.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, they used it to pay things like this is
a standing bit of Congress.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, because if there's a surplus of grain, especially corn,
they had to use it or lose it. So it
doesn't keep and it takes up a ton of room.
But if you distill it into liquor, you can solve
both of those problems. It's you know, store, it's keeps longer,
totally make new friends. So this new tax would have
like absolutely wrecked the economy in Appalachia. You had to
(06:09):
pay the tax in cash, and they didn't have cash.
They just had hooch. The good folks of the mountains
weren't having it. And thus was born the Whiskey Rebellion
of seventeen ninety four Western Pennsylvania. So all these armed
dissidents they attacked and they burned the house of the
regional federal tax collector guy, and then four hundred armed
(06:32):
rebels marched on Pittsburgh. And the powers that be they're terrified, like,
we're gonna have a revolt. This is no good revolt. Yeah,
So President Washington he invoked the Militia Act of seventeen.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Ninety two, calling out the militia.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
They called up the state militias from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland,
Come on, boys. In the fall of seventeen ninety four,
Washington led thirteen thousand Delitia men into western Pennsylvania. So
let's back up a second. Four hundred armed rebels, thirteen
thousand militia men.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
I know they got long rifles, but that's going to
be a wha. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
That was actually the only time a sitting US president
has ever led troops in the field. And then it's
all talk after that. And so this shut the rebellion
down with a quickness. Obviously, one hundred and fifty rebels
were arrested, two got convicted of treason, but they were
later pardoned and the tax stood. Then we're going to
jump forward eighteen sixty two the Revenue Act, and that
(07:33):
was passed to fund the Civil War, like we're constantly
just taxing to fund these wars. It reimposed these super
steep federal taxes on alcohol, and so that is when
the super large scale moonshining took root in Appalachia. Federal
revenuers as they called them, tax enforcement agents, started raiding stills,
(07:54):
and it was mountain communities versus the Feds. There are
a lot of families who had distilled openly for generations
and now they're outlaws. So poor farming families in remote hollows,
and like you said, black or white they were selling
liquor as the only reliable source of cash income, and
the recipes and the techniques were really closely guarded family secrets,
(08:16):
and each one had its own sort of quality or character.
And then also, you know, making your own whiskey fit
right in with the region's value of independence and like
the distrust of outside authority.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Totally, and also a connection like both of the land
and with the tradition of your family. So it's like,
who are you to get.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Involved the exactly. And then prohibition came and so that
was championed by Protestant temperance movements in the region. Yeah,
but it was also this cash cow for the Moonshiners.
They're like, we love prot Yeah sure, so they're the
demand for illegal mountain made whiskey just skyrock yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Them and the Canadians were like, okay, I love this.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
So we had these like one small family stills in
the Holler are suddenly shipping out to big cities Chicago,
New York. The criming became organized, and so you once
had a bartering tool, now it's just a straight up industry.
Prohibition ends, but the fight with the government continues. So
booze was legal right all of a sudden, But the
(09:19):
stills were still operating outside the law, and there was
this like total cat and mouse game between the ATF
that was called the Alcohol Tax Unit. Then and all
these Appalachian moonshiners agents were staging huge raids moonshiners. They
had to get more and more clever. They hid the
stills deep in the woods. They had these really elaborate
(09:41):
warning systems, and then they developed fast cars to outrun
the law on delivery runs. And thus was born NASCAR.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Go Watch Thunder Road to Robert Mitchell.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yeah, because they souped up their cars to outrun the revenuers.
But then they just started racing each other. That's the
natural instinct for and bragging rights. So by the seventies
and eighties, nineteen seventies and eighties, improved roads, economic development programs,
changing culture, Like we're kind of bringing about like the
(10:12):
death knell to traditional moonshining. So this romantic outlaw image
was fading as the practice became more associated with organized crime. Still,
no pun intended. Moonshining shaped the culture in these really
lasting ways. It influenced the music. There are a ton
of folk and countryside County, oh Yeah, I'll celebrate in
(10:35):
the moonshiner And it's in the storytelling, It's in this
culture of resistance to authority. It's in the cuisine. You know,
corn is like central to Mountain food ways. Moonshining holds
on as one of the most evocative symbols of Appalachian identity.
And I was pondering this, Sarin. Yeah, I was like
(10:56):
thinking about how it's at this crossroads of ingenuity, pop
independence and defiance, and that's kind of where we get
like the best American stuff. So some former moonshiners decided
to go legit. So you had states like Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia,
and Kentucky. They issued craft distillery licenses and Appleachian moonshine
(11:21):
became this like marketable brand. The mystique of that old
tradition gets reclaimed as heritage rather than criminality. And one
such man who went from outlaw to law abider to
outlaw is the guy I want to tell you about today.
To outlaw Zarin, Meet Marvin Popcorn Sutton.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Get out of town Wi Hopcornton Hopcorn Sutton.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
He was born in nineteen forty se Joe Biden besties
Total besties, popcorn. They fought, pulled out blades.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
He was born to go back to Delaware.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
He was born in nineteen forty six in Maggie Valley,
North Carolina. And that's sort of between Asheville, North Carolina
and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Yeah, right next to Great Smoky
Mountains National Park. And it was originally Cherokee Country. So
according to the Assembly magazine quote, his family had been
(12:16):
in western North Carolina in the area of Hemphill and Kataluchi,
as he put it in one interview, quote, as long
as time lasted. And so they lived off the land.
These people were just farming to survive, and they were
just like their neighbors all up and down the hallers.
His dad took whatever little gigs he could get. The
(12:36):
mom kept the home. She would churn butter and trade
that for groceries. In Waynesville, North Carolina, which was the
next biggest town, and that was the county seat. Today
that Waynesville has a population of like ten thousand people.
And that's the big one, that's the big rural. Yeah,
kids had to work too, popcorn quote. Grew up pulling
(12:59):
weeds for home and picking tomatoes for fifteen cents an hour.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah, yeah, not even by like the amount he pulls, No.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
By the hour. So Maggie Valley, which has a population
of about seventeen hundred people today, that at the time
was pretty much a crossroads. And now it's been developed
out first in the sixties because they put in an
amusement park, an amusement that closed in two thousand and three,
but then as the Chattaloochi Ski Area. That's the entry
(13:28):
point to it. So that's where they get, like there's motels.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
And all that the beginning of the tourists.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Yes, yes, but back when popcorn was a pop there
was only a small store which had one phone located
within the store. That was the one phone in two Yeah,
popcorn told people that the only time anyone used it
was to ring up the undertaker when someone died. It
was like the sole purpose of the phone. So there
is young Popcorn in Maggie Valley. When he was just
(13:55):
five years old, he was taught a trade. Five moonshininge.
That's how old he was when someone took him to
learn how to make this stuff. By the time he
was six, he's like world weary. He was smoking cigarettes
six years old. Six years old, so then by the
time he s double shift by the time he's sixteen.
(14:18):
Basically he decided to make a go of it and
distill his own brand of moonshine. Sixteen, he was years
into the year. He was not very good at it.
Those eleven years of instruction apparently didn't help. He called
it liquor. Oh wow, maybe that's why it didn't do
too well. But he wanted to get it right. He
decided to seriously work in the tradition of his daddy
(14:40):
and his daddy's daddy. Oh Graham peppy. Yeah, So he
decided to go like super old school with it. He
heated it with wood, he balanced out the heat using
fresh stream water. It was very much of the land
that was on like a sense of place totally, which
is kind of like Scottish whiskey about saying, yeah, the
(15:01):
terror aspects exactly in the process and in the materials
right right. And so this is how the og Scots
Irish did it. And I do need to note that
these aren't really Irish. There's Scots who were kind of
pushed out by the English. To quote settle in the
Ulster provinces in Ireland was to say, conquered Northern Ireland,
(15:22):
Northern Ireland, but then they got pushed out of the
Ulster Counties.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
You've seen the cool maps they do where people got
to settle in Americas from the Aisles. You see, like
this big arrow go right from there to the Appolis exactly.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
So, like the Scots were in the Ulster Counties and
they're starving. The Catholics don't want them there, and the
Anglicans who ran the place didn't want them there either.
No one wanted them. So they ran off to the
American colonies and no one wanted them there. Yeah, and
so they headed for the hills like Appalachian Piedmont regions.
It was rough living and that's when they like really
(15:56):
developed backwoods living. You know, corn liquor because they didn't
have barley like they'd use, you know in Ireland. So
corn liquor was medicine. It was currency. And now we
got popcorn. So now popcorn is around twenty years old,
and he had perfected his liquor and he was distilling
full time. And that's around the time that he earned
(16:18):
his nickname. According to the Assembly quote, around the same
time he picked up a fitting nickname for a corn
whiskey distiller when he attacked a coin operated popcorn machine
in a bar after it stole his dime. He snatched
up a pool cue and showed the damn thing what
he thought about it. It cost him fifty dollars and
(16:38):
earned him a nickname he would use for the rest
of his life. So let's stop there for an ad
They're like, corn all a good popcorn over there, whooping
on that machine. So we're gonna stop for an ad.
Our very own revenuers. This is the tax that we
all pay to listen to these tales of criminality. If
you think about it, and when we return, pop corn
(17:00):
gets popping.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Zaren Elizabeth thereon right.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
It's nineteen sixties, okay, that's where we are right now.
That's when Popcorn Sutton hit his stride making the legal
hoops in Appalachia. He got away with it for a bit,
but then he got busted. In the early seventies.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
He was like deep in the woods, oh yeah, because
you can always think and see the if you're burning
the fire, wach you're still the smoke will go up.
So they used to look for the smoke in the woods.
You like that shouldn't be got to go like way.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Oh yeah, so per the Greenville Sun quote. In nineteen
seventy five, Sutton was convicted in US District court on
numerous federal charges relating to the manufacturing and possession of
an unregistered still, having distilling apparatus, and untaxed liquor. He
was given probation not good. Yeah, And then he got
(18:08):
pinched again in nineteen eighty and this time it was
on a felony drug offense. He got a five year
suspended sentence.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Do you know what the drug was?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
I'm going to guess weed, so he.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Said, nineteen eighty so I had to open up, yeah,
right to the floor. Question.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
He got five years suspended sentence. That's not bad. And
then five years later he actually went to prison for
the first time. Nineteen eighty five, he got convicted of
assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Was another Sikes popcorn machine.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
I think it was a human popcorn. Enough, he's back out.
So during the eighties and nineties, he like late eighties nineties,
he went somewhat legit. He ran a junk shop on
the outskirts of Cherokee, North Carolina. And when I say
junk shop, I'm talking like old appliances, all these old
(19:00):
dusty bottles.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Folk arts, like stuff in a parking lot.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Basically old fill in the blank.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like this still got some life in it.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Yes, And you know it's like a dusty store. You
walk in and immediately you're like sneezing.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
In nineteen eighty seven printer and he's like, you still
got some life in it. You used matrix.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Like stores like this litter the rural South.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Oh yeah, they're not. They're little central California.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
And like more eclectic neighborhoods elsewhere, but they're in essence
dust factor. Yes, let's just be real. And so in
addition to selling all this old stuff, though, he also
sold new bruise.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
New bruise bottles.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Of moonshine were sold out of the back of the store.
So it's kind of like this speakeasy setup. You had
to know that he had it, and he had to
trust that you were cool about it. But then someone
squealed and the revenue one revenuers came a colin, you know,
someone I'm going to get you nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Eight damn revenue.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Uh, And they hit the jack pot in that picker's
paradise in the store, they came across popcorn still and
sixty gallons of white lightning.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
He had to still in his store, like in the basement.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
So, according to the Smoky Mountains National Park Blog, yes, quote,
while operating a distilling unit and selling illegal alcohol is
a felony punishable by up to five years in prison
and a fine up to ten thousand dollars. Popcorn Suddon
was not initially sent to jail. The judge instead put
him on probation and offered him an out with a
(20:32):
suspended sentence.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
You know, fair enough, hard well, there.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Must have been something really charming about old Popcorn.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I was wondering.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
And when you look at his picture, you see that
he's every inch the stereotypical old moonshiner.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Does he even have the long beard?
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Oh yeah, there's this one shot of him. He's like
sitting in a chair, he's holding a jar moonshine, and
he looks like an Appalachian philosopher king. Okay, he looks
like he lost a bet with a taxidermist because his
hat is like this leather contraption that a raccoon died
on top of, and it's decorated with feathers that were
(21:10):
stolen from a parrot who was probably like relieved to
be rid of them. And you talked about like the
long beard. The beard is less facial hair and more
like this separate living entity that has decided to colonize
his entire chest. It's just like it's like playing risk.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Just creeping down.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
It's like a tumbleweed that settled down and like got
married and raised a family there. And then he's got
these overalls on. Right, It's like that's the official uniform
of men who have zero interest in your opinions. So
many pairs of overalls he's got, like the plaid flannel shirts.
There's forty seven different colors and none of them were coordinated.
(21:53):
And to be together, it's Phil Billie's chic. He's iconic.
So I can see how people just couldn't make themselves
commit this character the jail. You need him in town, yes,
And he was a well known local.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Character as a local color and through.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
The Assembly magazine describes him as sort of holding court
in his junk shop. Nice and per the New York
Times quote, he lived in a cluttered cabin on a
wooded hill, where he also built his stills, gave pistols
to the incoming sheriffs, and fathered so many children that
no one has any idea of the exact accounting.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Fathered so many children, really using the word father, little colonels,
colonels throughout the countries, the children like a biblical spreading seed.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
I've made all kinds of liquor in my time, Hapcorn says,
tending the still. I've made the fighting kind, the love
and kind, the crime kind. I even made some one
time and sold to this couple. They was happily married.
Next damn week they was divorced. Yeah, the marriage buster,
the bestseller. So here's this guy. He's in his fifties,
(23:00):
but he looks way older.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
I'm thinking love seventies.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Oh yeah, Sinna's a rail He's got the droopy overalls,
a floppy hat. He walks all bent over from like
years and years of carrying heavy bags of sugar up
to his stills in the mountains. It is the age
of like seven.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
So like the Warner Brothers animators who did like like
all the old cartoons, will.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Be like, he is our role model completely. He's weathered, yeah,
and he looks like he's from this other time. But
he's still He had a cell phone and he watched TV.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
I knew he did that.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
He just had like the old timey aesthetic.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, he was walking tradition.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Yes, he restored a model.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
T Oh, really he drove it around.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
He would look.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Super on brand if he actually drove it around. No,
he it was garaged up and like he only took
it out on special occasions.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
His investment property.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Yeah, on the front bumper he painted mom corn in
all caps in front of the passenger seat and popcorn
in front of the driver's seats, just like hand painted.
Speaker 5 (24:01):
No.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Instead, he ran around in a nineteen eighty two Ford Fairmount.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Then he turned into a tutor.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
A Tudor. Yeah, it looks like it has a massive
engine and like if you glance quickly out of the
corner of your eye, you might think it's an El Camino.
Like it kind of has that long like the back
windows just like a slice of glass really, and the
trunk is like super long. So he got that car
by trading three gallons of moonshine for it. He called
(24:28):
it his three jug car, and he sold He sold
half gallon jars of corn liquor to a tourist for
twenty five bucks a pop, so that car ran him
about one hundred and fifty dollars. He didn't sell all
of his stuff in small batches to tourists though, like
he actually moved most of his product with bootleggers, like
hundreds of gallons at a time. We were just all
(24:52):
over the country.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
People come in. There was like, oh said, like a
blossoming of interest in Chicago.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
No, just you know those in the know. Wait, he
entered into the Ridiculous Crime Book Club in nineteen ninety
nine when he's self published Me and My Liquor spelled
l I k K E R.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Oh I I K K E R.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Yeah, Okay, yeah. The New York Times described it as
quote a rambling, obscene and often hilarious account of his
life in the trade.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
So it was like in the trade.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
A spiral bound affair and tons of photos, tons, all
black and white, and it was it's printed in this
sort of comic sands font and it starts with a
scan of his license to sell moonshine certificate from the
National Moonshine Association, signed by the mayor of Maggie Valley.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Okay, here's this, Like any is this the governing body? Yes, okay,
because it's like I.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Think I think he did. Here's how the narrative starts. Quote,
this book is all true. There is not a damn
thing in it that is not true. My name is
Popcorn Sutton, and how old of my It ain't nobody's
damn business. I've been making, drinking and selling liquor for
now on forty years. My granddaddy made drink and sold
(26:09):
liquor most of his life. People worry about liquor killing them.
I don't, because my granddaddy is proof it won't. He
smoked camel cigarettes just like I do. One after another.
He also drunk all the liquor he could get and
chase all the women he could. He lived to be
about ninety years old. So what in the hell am
I worried about? Not a damn thing.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I like a spirit, you know. I'm telling you this
is a man who knows who he is, where he
comes from, and where he's going.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
There's this photo of a rough looking woman in a
house dress and an old man seated next to her
on a floral sofa.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
So is this mom, Corny? No?
Speaker 3 (26:44):
No, the old guy's smoking a cigarette. There's like an
old vacuum cleaner in the background. Yeah, here's the caption.
This is smut Web and his wife, Lucille. Smut is
dead now. He's the one that teached me how to
make a damn moonshine still a long time ago.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Smut wob.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah he's dead now.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Case you're smutt case, here's your money now.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
So the whole thing is like sitting listening to some
guy ramble on a rocking chair on his front porch.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
And my time in the very rural South has made
me very familiar with this type of socializing. I bet
there's a lot of technical remembrances about the actual making
of the liquor, and then there are all these like
scattered rambling anecdotes. I'm gonna hit you with one more,
okay please, I have been worried all day. My doctor
come to see me yesterday and he told me, popcoin
(27:37):
noticed the spelling. You have only sixty two years to live.
It was my doctor. He is nobody's damn business. I
also had two of the best friends of my life
visit me, Tonny Moore and his wife Alice. Me and
Tonny Moore and all the More family goes back many years.
I used to get drunkard in Hell with Claymore. His brother,
played a guitar and sung a song Nobody's business.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Was I do.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
One time, me and Ken Moore was out one night.
We had just got bought a brand new Ford car.
I think it was a Toreno. We left Grassy Fork
headed to Newport, got the Hartford and then on the
I forty West, then onto the bluffting curve. Ken had
that god damn Ford wide open. This is the first
time I ever pulled a gun on a man to
(28:21):
get him to slow down. I told Ken, if we
are gonna die, by God, we're going together. I had
a Colt thirty eight cock right beside his head. That
damn car was on two wheels going round that bluff
and curve around one hundred miles an hour. No less,
I am sure we made it to Newport some damn way,
and I don't know how. We spent the night at
(28:41):
Ryinharts Bar and made it back to Grassy Fork the
same damn way, and I don't know how. Anyway, me
and Ken Moore was always best of friends, just as
the rest of the More family love.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Anyway, anyway, I love a Claymore no relation to the munition,
and Ken Moore, no relation to the truck.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
All the boys you know they are.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
One more. I was gonna ask, kidding me here you go.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
There are two things that I don't want a goddamn
thing to do with. That is bad moonshine and viagra.
I drunk some bad liquor one time, and it came
one tinker's damn killing me. I couldn't sleep, or I
couldn't just buy god pass out. Anyway, I did go
to sleep in the wee hours of the morning, but
(29:30):
when I did wake up, I was in a daze.
The bed I thought was by God spinning around and
all the ones that stopped spinning. Then I looked down
at the foot of the bed and there sat a
little purple eyed monkey with a pair of combat boots
staring at me. That's when I stopped drinking badass liquor
and the VIAGRAA to hell with it. Anyway, I ain't
(29:51):
over the hill yet. The hills therea.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Pills.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
So he released his book, which I now own as
a downloaded PDA. No, I'm not kidding you. Amazing y'all
send it to you and Not long after that, in
two thousand and two, Neil Hutchison made a documentary about
Popcorn called This is the Last damn Run of Liquor
I'll ever make. It's the name of it. A lot
(30:25):
of Hutchinson's work is focused on like cultures and transition
and all over the world, but a lot of it
in the South. And so initially the documentary was sold
out of the junk shop, and then it became this
like underground cult phenomenon, and then pretty soon the movie
and Popcorn were getting profiled in newspapers. Daniel Johnson celebrities
(30:46):
started coming calling, including good old Johnny Knoxville.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Of course Tennessee.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Yeah so he was, he was writ Yeah, I love that,
that's his name. And then there was a History Channel
documentary in two thousand and seven. Mark Ramsey, who was
a close friend of Popcorn's, told him, quote, old man,
you can't be a movie star and make liquor too,
and then Popcorn answered him, you can't sell it if
(31:12):
nobody knows you got it, like fair enough. Yeah. So
Popcorn was still a fixture in Maggie Valley, but by
this time he'd moved to eastern Tennessee just over the
state line, specifically Cock County. He told people that he
had a dual citizenship. He thought the move to Tennessee
would be better for business, and he had a bunch
(31:33):
of money from the movie and the History Channel thing,
and he wanted to move on up ok So per
the New York Times quote, nestled in the rocky embrace
of the Great Smoky Mountains, Cock County was a moonshine
center for as long as anyone here can recall. For
most families in a rugged place with few opportunities, it
was a matter of survival. But for an enterprising few,
(31:54):
making it and hauling untaxed and unregulated liquor became a profitable, dangerous,
and inevitably romanticized trade. Making moonshine later gave way to
growing marijuana, and by the nineteen sixties the county was
notorious for chop shops, cock fighting, rings, prostitution, and corrupt officials.
Over the decades, the lawless elements have been corralled for
(32:17):
the most part, but the batt old image of Cock
County lingers and irks and.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Irks when they got overrun by hippie outlaws, like we
want to take a shot at this list e actually.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
So like, of course, Bondcorn feels right at home naturally,
and so he set up shop outside Parrottsville, Tennessee, population
two hundred and seventeen. Wow, Parrotsville are just outside of it.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
That's like seven families too.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah, pretty much is home to Swaggerty Blockhouse. Okay, And
a blockhouse is basically a building that's used as sort
of like a fort with gun portals. And originally this
one was supposed to have been built by a settler
named James Swaggerty in seventeen eighty seven, but later inspection
determined that it was actually a anti lever barn built
by someone else in eighteen sixty, and it didn't stop
(33:05):
it from being listed on the US National Register of
Historic Places as the Swaggerty Blockhouse. There's a certain like
parks and w rec Pawnee quality that story I really liked.
So anyway, Popcorn he rented some land in Parrotsville and
then built himself a house on it on the rented land,
and it was decorated much like his junk shop, like
he had old license plates, like lude knickknacks, like I
(33:28):
think it's like ceramic salt and pepper shakers doing things
they should antique tools. He papered the ceiling with dollar bills.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Oh that's a that's a good look.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Cute.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
One of my favorite bars I go to has.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
To the Alley in Oakland. You know, they're all it's
like a fire trap. And so he also got himself
a banjo. He paid eight grand for it.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Eight grand?
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Could he play the banjo?
Speaker 4 (33:52):
No? No?
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Was it e scrugs banjo?
Speaker 3 (33:55):
He just he thought it was like a good looking accessory.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
He's like, this fits, this does he definitely is the
way to atesterize his look.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
And he prepaid for his funeral. So this was two
thousand and six. He's sixty years old. He bought a
coffin and then he ordered up his gravestone granted and
engraved on it was the following epitaph, Popcorn says you.
So this feels like the right time to take an
(34:22):
ad break and think about how that might be the
best grave marker ideas around. And when we returned Parrotsville.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Zaren Elizabeth.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
All right, so we talk on popcorn. Sutton infamous moonshiner.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
I'm so into this guy.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
He moved to Parrot'sville, Tennessee, and it was there that
he got three enormous stills running.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Oh, I thought you were going to say new baby
lamas well.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Probably I'm going to assume yes. And those babies look
so weird. They had beards. No, he had two eight
hundred gallon jobs and the third one held one thousand
and seven fifty gallons. Like chazam, that's some big stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
This is like, you know, enough water for a small
town if you had no water tower.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
He's like one of those AI centers. So he didn't
he didn't do these the old fashioned way with the
wood and the creek water. He ran these on unlighted gasoline.
And it was there that he stored all his hoots
jars in this stillhouse, as well as sacks of grain,
(35:49):
a couple thousand pounds of sugar. So let's think about
that gas, grain, sugar, Southern heats.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Everything you've said is explosive.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Yeah, it makes me think fire, either.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Fire or expos You've taken like, you know, non dairy
creamer and waved it over like an open flame. Yes, yeah,
can you realize, hey, kids, that's how bakeries catch fire.
This flower has energy, sugar has energy. Will they will burn.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Sarren just taught all the children the trick of non
dairy powdered non dairy creamer.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Yeah, shaking over an open flame and it'll first person
that's flash like a magician doing magic tricks.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
You're welcome, parents. So the Assembly magazine reported quote on
April twenty fourth, two thousand and seven, a faulty wiring
box ignited a fire in the stillhouse. There were dried
out timbers, sacks of green and sugar and gasoline to
feed the flame, and the fire was instantly out of control.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Oh, of course, Saren.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Close your eyes.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
You picture it.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
You are a firefighter with the Parrotsville Volunteer Fire Department.
You're sitting in the back of your mechanic's garage, tinkering
with a mini van someone brought in yesterday. As always,
you have your police scanner radio on and the emergency
alert pager on your belt. You're on call. The alarm
sounds and you jump up, ready for action. Will it
be a car accident, a heart attack?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Nope?
Speaker 3 (37:12):
You trot toward your pickup truck, ready to head to
the fire station and pick up the pumper truck. You
glance at the pager and you see it fire. You
look at the address.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
Hello.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Oh. Eight or so minutes later, you're standing in front
of the fire truck, staring at the giant column of
black smoke rising out of Popcorn Sutton Stillhouse. Dagnavit. The
fire chief is called in support from neighboring towns and districts,
and you are sure they, as you did, are following
the rising tower of smoke and embers to the scene.
(37:41):
And you know the Sheriff's deputies are on their way too.
You hear tires tearing up the gravel drive behind you.
You spin around, expecting to see those very same deputies,
but instead it's a blue Ford Fairmount, and behind the
wheel is Popcorn himself. The old Coots certainly does make
the finest moonshine you've ever sipped, but making that stump
(38:02):
water comes with wrists. Like the fire raging out of
control in.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Front of you.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Your fellow firefighters are doing their best to get an
under controlled. You're manning the pump on the truck and
backing up the chief as he tries to control the scene.
Popcorn races up to you. He tells you he has
three stills in there, plus a bunch of copper wire
of dubious origin, bags of sugar, bunch of sour mash.
You can't let the deputies see that stuff when they
(38:27):
get here, he says, maybe just let it burn a son.
You tell him, no, sir, you can't do that. You
don't want this to spread and catch the woods on fire.
Arcs of water spray behind you, pummeling the burning building
and steaming high into the air. Popcorn stares at a
school bus a few dozen feet from the stillhouse. Okay,
(38:47):
he tells, you, just let me go move my school
bus out of the way. No, you tell him, you
can't get that close to an active conflagration. You love
that word, conflagration. Popcorn tries to push past to you
anyway and get to the bus. You hold them back.
You can hear the sirens of the patrol cars approaching. Look, you,
little Popcorn seeds that you I got eight hundred and
(39:10):
fifty gallons of liquor in that there bus, and I
ain't going down on a possession charge like that. He's
a small man, but wiry and strong. His ropey muscles
work as hard as they can to wriggle free from
your brass. But you are a big old milk fed
country boy, man of the mountains. That old fella isn't
going anywhere. Popcorn takes one last long look at the bus,
(39:33):
exhales unlets his whole body sag. You don't fall for
those sorts of tricks, so you keep it in your clutches.
You hate to do it, but you gotta hand them
over to the deputies. You look up at the burning building.
Your c just about tamping that fire all the way out.
You side too arin. When the cops were finally able
(39:53):
to get into the burned out building, they found those
three stills, I bet they did. And they found thirty
seven half gallon jar a moonshine. Yeah. But then they
entered the untouched school, okay, and in there were eight
hundred and fifty gallons of white lightning. They had already
called in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ATF,
(40:15):
knowing full well what they'd find ATF, busted him in
no time. In July of two thousand and seven, Popcorn
was fined three thousand dollars and got two years probation
for possession of moonshine, plus another six months probation for
possession of a still. He felt invincible, like if he
could skate by on that kind of wrapped then there's
(40:36):
no need to fret and certainly no need to slow down.
In fact, he wanted to rebuild bigger and better than before.
He's exactly but here's the thing, like he's not like, oh,
I'm gonna go straight now.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
I got lucky on that one.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
The revenuers are relentless. They kept an eye on Popcorn.
And so a year after his sentencing on the fire
case and he's on probe Yes Yes, ATF discovered that
he had three stills again, and they came across this
information when Popcorn sold two hundred gallons of corn liquor
to an undercover agent. And Popcorn is like, look, i'll
(41:15):
give you a deal. It's fifty dollars a gallon, and
if you buy more than fifty gallons, the price goes
down to thirty bucks a gallon. It's a good deal,
and especially because there's no tax. What I love is
that Popcorn offered different flavors of moonshine. He had apple
pie that tasted like cinnamon and apple. He had cherry peach.
Like I knew a guy when I lived down south
(41:36):
who had a pilot'slicense and this little cessna, and he'd
fly it up to Tennessee, pick up gallons of moonshine,
and then fly it back down. And he didn't resell
the stuff. He just shared it and enjoyed it himself.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
My dad moonshine, and it.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
Was flavored stuff like I took a sip of the
peach one.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Oh it burned.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
It tasted terrible.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Yeah, moonshine. Guy tasted like old, like white lighting.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
And yeah, I don't see the purpose of get it.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
He gets to North Carolina to tell too much?
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Ay right, we're just using vague eas So anyway, it
wasn't just that the agent made the sale. He also
got video and in it you can see like a
bunch of guns in the background. Oh no, and then
there's popcorn being popcorn. Like he danced while he talked
to the guy, and he was waxing eloquent on the
specifics of how one goes about making moonshine, just like
(42:23):
in his book. Per the Greenville Sun newspaper quote the
week of March third, an undercover Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission
TABC agent had a phone conversation with Sutton, and Sutton
said he had five hundred gallons of moonshine to sell
in Tennessee and four hundred gallons to sell in Maggie Valley,
North Carolina. On March twelfth, two thousand and eight, Sutton
(42:46):
took an undercover TABC agent to a barn on Scott
Pond Road where three moonshine stills were located. So he's
just not even sensing that these are undercover. That place
on Scott Pond Road was the mother load.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
I can't believe he took him to. His mother loved more.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
Than eleven hundred gallons of sour mash, which would become
one hundred and thirty gallons a hooch. So that's proof
of not just possession but production everything. Government sees it all. Oh,
they came in Chronicles Magazine reported quote following Popcorn's arrest
ATF Special Agent James Kavanaugh proclaimed moonshine is romanticized in
(43:22):
folklore and in the movies. The truth, though, is that
moonshine is a dangerous health issue and breeds other crime.
Oh sta ain't lyon.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
I mean, yeah, sure, but like the dose makes the poison.
Anything can be a criminal act or eything can be
bad for your house. That's true if there's enough of it.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
So Popcorn he pleads guilty to possessing firearms and illegally
producing distilled spirits by distillation from mash and other material.
H his lawyer was like begging the court, begging the judge.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Do not let him on the stand.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
No, please, because he pleads guilty. He's like, he cannot
do time. He's two weak, he won't survive it. He
said that Popcorn was quote sixty two and looks like
he's eighty two. So he begged the judge please give
him probation.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Can you imagine how dehydrated his body? Oh my god,
his entire life.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
And so he then is like pleading his case for leniency.
The Greenville Son described the scene quote Sutton, wearing overalls
and a denim jacket, promised the court he would never
again make whiskey, doing so as he stood with a
walking cane during sentencing, and he said, I'd like to
die at home rather than in a penitentiary.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Oh yes, please, come on, wouldn't so.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
A bunch of Popcorn's neighbors in the area signed a
petition asking the court to have mercy on Popcorn. Here's
what they said. Quote, the undersigned are personally acquainted with
Marvin Popcorn Sutton. We trust him in any matters of
great importance in our everyday lives, and welcome him as
a neighbor. Considering his basic nature, age, and significant medical problems,
(45:03):
we asked the court to consider leniency in sentencing Popcorn,
and Popcorn he had just been diagnosed with cancer. Tip
oh for Christis the judge I was like, that's all
well and good, but he had yet to hear Popcorn
say he was sorry for what he'd done. And the
judge sid quote, Sutton seems to be proud of his
disregard for the law, and no sentence thus far has
(45:26):
deterred him from his continuing criminal activities.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
I want to legal fielty.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
So June Yeah. Basically January two thousand and nine, Popcorn
got sentenced to eighteen months in federal prison, and the
judge said he could quote self report to prison when notified,
and until then he's under house arrest. Now his whole life,
Popcorn had decided his own fate, like he'd set his
(45:52):
own course. Laws be damned, society be damned. Good sense
be damned.
Speaker 5 (45:58):
And then.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
He's confronted with a scenario that he couldn't work around
and that he couldn't control. He found a way to
choose his own path for the last time. On March sixteenth,
two thousand and nine, just four days before he was
supposed to report to prison, he connected the exhaust pipe
of his forward to a hose and you can figure
out the rest. So his daughter told the Knoxville News quote,
(46:22):
nobody was going to tell him what to do. He
did it his way. He always lived a death before
dishonor kind of life. Those factors gave Marvin the strength
to die the way he lived, according to his own
wishes and no one else's. And now before he died,
Popcorn wanted to make sure he had a legacy. It's
like he knew his end was near. So he worked
(46:44):
with this former professional supercross motorcycle racer named Jamie Grocer
to teach him the ropes. And Grocer wanted to get
into distilling spirits, but he wanted to do it legally
and pay the taxi.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
We handmake our labels.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Yeah, because it was like catching on culturally with the
Mason Jar aesthetic and stuff and so this way, it's
a quick way to do it too, because it goes
straight to market. You don't have to age it. So
Grocer told Halma Today this newspaper quote. He kept teaching
me what he'd learned. He told me, no one else
knows what you know, and he was methodical about passing
(47:21):
it along. So Grocer and his business partners asked Popcorn
who he'd like to work with for a celebrity tie in,
and Popcorn is like, there is only one person, one person.
Hank Williams Junior, of course, Cephas Bosiphis told Halma Today,
(47:41):
quote My initial reaction was I have zero interest, none,
But then they showed me Popcorn's whole story and I
related to him and I admired him. Here was the
last real Moonshiner, and Moonshine has been so connected to
the music and to the South. It used to be everywhere.
So eventually Popcorn's wife, Pam, and the distiller marketed Popcorn
(48:06):
Sutton's Tennessee White whiskey and they used Popcorn's og Backwoods recipe,
handcrafted and all that, and then that kind of petered out,
and then Pam started working with a guy named Joe
Baker and they developed Popcorn Sutton Bourbon Whiskey blend and
Popcorn Sutton liquor. L like KK e er so in
a way, popcorn lives on. So Zarin was here ridiculous takeaway.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
I've got to get my hands on some of this
liquor with two k's enjoying myself a fine night in
honor of popcorn.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
Yeah, raised wind to pop p Oh.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
I love his story. I mean, this is some real
life Duke Brothers stuff, but I mean, like the outrageousness
of it, the whole Uncle jessiness of it is just incredible.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
Well, we talk so much about characters. We love the characters,
and this guy's just pure character.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Yeah, he's got so much character enough for like two
three people. Yes, exactly, Elizabeth, what's your ridiculous takeway?
Speaker 3 (48:58):
I you know, I think like he I just keep
going back to character that he's He's this prototype and
this almost stereotype, but you see all the little individual
things he brings to the whole experience. And I know
I've been sitting on this story for a while because
of the way he went out. I wasn't sure if
that was something to talk about, But then I thought no,
(49:21):
you know that's part of his lord and his legend,
and it's just it's a fascinating story. And how quickly
he had to grow up, you know, six years old,
smoking cigarettes and like all the things that he kind
of accomplished totally self created. Amazing.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
I don't imagine there was a lot of schooling involved,
apprenticeship there, but none internships. It's very much a self
directed path, very much, you know what.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
I think I need that talk back, Dave.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (50:05):
I like you, Hey, producer, Dave, Elizabeth and Zarin. This
is Ada from Wyoming and I'm listening to your Pippin'
Outlaw episode, and you were laughing about him joining the
rodeo team. So I thought you'd find it amusing to
know that my community college in my hometown lost some
(50:26):
funding a few years ago and so they had to
get rid of all the sports teams except for rodeo.
So now the only sport we offer his rodeo, and
it brings in a ton of people from Canada all over.
Speaker 3 (50:40):
I love it. It's awesome and I love that it
brings all these people in over the border. Hard draw
community college sports, so big ups.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Hopefully they give out a really good belt.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
You know they do. They got an awesome belt. That's
it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous
Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Blue
Sky and on Instagram. We're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime pod,
email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, and most importantly,
download the free iHeart app and leave us a talkback.
(51:19):
Please reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton
and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Kombucha Brewer to
the Stars Dave Cousten. Our Ridiculous assistant is Terry Pretzel's Maldonado.
Fon research is by Marissa Pictato, Chip Brown and Jabbari
(51:40):
cheese Stick Davis. The theme song is by Thomas Ritz,
Cracker Lee and Travis Peanut. Dutton post wardrobe is provided
by Botany five hundred producer Dave Coustin's wardrobe by mister
Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot
and Mister Andre. Executive producers are undercover atf agents Ben
Bollen and Noel.
Speaker 4 (51:59):
B Ridicous Crime Say It one More Timeous Crime.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts
from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hi, Sar Elizabeth.
Speaker 3 (00:05):
How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm doing pretty well about you?
Speaker 3 (00:07):
I am well good.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I like your striped pants. There's like things that they
give to like convicts in the nineteen thirties, a changing
very fun and ridiculous. It really is.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Thank you, Ridiculous Crimes. You know it's ridiculous, Oh man pants.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, you know how I like history, right, I do
know that, and I'm often reading about random things, and
so I went down this rabbit hole and I thought
i'd share it with you. So the founder of the
Chinese Han Empire, and it's like the ethnic honor the
largest majority in China. So when they basically took over
the area and launched the Han Empire, this was like
(00:46):
two O two BC, right, right, But the guy who
founded the Han Empire, the first emperor, was this guy
named Lou Bang or Liu Bang. Right now, if I apologize,
I'm not pronouncing that correctly, but it's my best I
got so Neo Bang. He was originally just not of
a nobility, royalty, nothing. It's just this regular guy and
(01:10):
he gets this job right, taking a bunch of penal
laborers like so I prisoned workers and he's supposed to
escort them from a construction site to this other new
construction site. And while they're going on the journey, some
of the prisoners escape, right, And according to Keen law
or you know qi n law, which was the previous empire,
(01:30):
if the prisoners escaped, he would be put to death
as the prison guard.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
They're like, you must have been on it. So what
does he do. He switches sides and he joins the rebels,
and they're like, man, this guy's good. He's a quick thinker.
They make him the leader. And so then from that
point on he joins what ends up being part of
the rebel army because there's all these warring states in
China at the time. So he joins his rebel army,
he works his way up and then he gets into it,
(01:55):
and then they win the fight, and he gets made like,
you know, one of the many kings of a province.
And then he leads an new revolution or rebellion against
against the guy who he who rebellion he was helping
defeats them in like two o two BC and thus
founds the Han Empire. So the whole Han Empire is
founded by a guy who was a prison guard who
when the prisoners escaped, He's like, I'm with you, fellas.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Prison guard to emperor. Yes, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And this is like the one like when we talk
about like China extends back. This is the point they're
talking about other than the Yellow Emperor, which is like
the real starting point. But this is like when the
Han Empire. So this is like, you know, China's history was.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Basically you're in the long haul.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I just love that story. I'm with you fellas, like
they're gonna kill me, so I guess I'm with you, Emperor. Boom, ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
That's ridiculous. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Fighting the revenuers?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Oh yeah, oh.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yeah, this is ridiculous Crime a podcast about absurd and
(03:10):
outrageous capers. Heis and cons It's always always ninety nine
percent murder free and one percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I know you always heard that we.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Talked about moonshiners before. Oh yeah, you have basically homemade
illegal liquor.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah, corn liquor, corn liquor.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
So when we talk about moonshine, we think about the
Appalachian region. That's the stronghold.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I think of my dad's family.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
You think your dad's family. Moon Shining in Appalachia has
a really rich and fascinating history. It's tied to the culture,
the economics, and that like rebel ethos of the communities.
They're outsiders and they know it and then they like
kind of revel in it.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yes, and it's also, by the way, as I pointed
out with my dad's family, this is true of Black
and White and the Apple Asian region. It's like the
re we all know.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, totally. So let's start with how Moonshine got its start.
Let me tell you, Saren Scott's Irish immigrants settled in
the region in the eighteenth century, and they brought with
them all these old traditions of distilling whiskey from their homelands.
So remember whiskey with an e is from Ireland or
(04:21):
the US whiskey with no e is from Scotland. Yes,
and as Mike Myers used to say in the old
SNL sketch, all things Scottish, if it's not Scottish, it's crap.
Because you know, the Scots aren't the biggest fans of
the English.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
I've heard this, Yeah, nor are the Irish.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
You know, the SNP Scottish National Party has called for
another independence referendum and the Scottish Parliament endorsed it. Labor
parties against it. So we shall see. And I've heard
over and over that Scotland and Catalonia will be the
tipping points in terms of independence in Europe, so like
if they leave the UK and Spain respectively, then all
(05:03):
these other areas will fill out suit. Anyway, let's go
back to the seventeen hundred Scott's Irish. They had already
been operating under a practice of defiance of British taxation,
and illegal distilleries were part of that. So in the US,
the first major flash point was in seventeen ninety one,
(05:24):
Alexander Hamilton pushed through this federal excise tax on whiskey
with any He wanted to find a way to pay
down all that Revolutionary War debt, and so in the
Appalachian region, whiskey wasn't like just some tipple that was currency.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, they used it to pay things like this is
a standing bit of Congress.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, because if there's a surplus of grain, especially corn,
they had to use it or lose it. So it
doesn't keep and it takes up a ton of room.
But if you distill it into liquor, you can solve
both of those problems. It's you know, store, it's keeps longer,
totally make new friends. So this new tax would have
like absolutely wrecked the economy in Appalachia. You had to
(06:09):
pay the tax in cash, and they didn't have cash.
They just had hooch. The good folks of the mountains
weren't having it. And thus was born the Whiskey Rebellion
of seventeen ninety four Western Pennsylvania. So all these armed
dissidents they attacked and they burned the house of the
regional federal tax collector guy, and then four hundred armed
(06:32):
rebels marched on Pittsburgh. And the powers that be they're terrified, like,
we're gonna have a revolt. This is no good revolt. Yeah,
So President Washington he invoked the Militia Act of seventeen.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Ninety two, calling out the militia.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
They called up the state militias from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland,
Come on, boys. In the fall of seventeen ninety four,
Washington led thirteen thousand Delitia men into western Pennsylvania. So
let's back up a second. Four hundred armed rebels, thirteen
thousand militia men.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
I know they got long rifles, but that's going to
be a wha. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
That was actually the only time a sitting US president
has ever led troops in the field. And then it's
all talk after that. And so this shut the rebellion
down with a quickness. Obviously, one hundred and fifty rebels
were arrested, two got convicted of treason, but they were
later pardoned and the tax stood. Then we're going to
jump forward eighteen sixty two the Revenue Act, and that
(07:33):
was passed to fund the Civil War, like we're constantly
just taxing to fund these wars. It reimposed these super
steep federal taxes on alcohol, and so that is when
the super large scale moonshining took root in Appalachia. Federal
revenuers as they called them, tax enforcement agents, started raiding stills,
(07:54):
and it was mountain communities versus the Feds. There are
a lot of families who had distilled openly for generations
and now they're outlaws. So poor farming families in remote hollows,
and like you said, black or white they were selling
liquor as the only reliable source of cash income, and
the recipes and the techniques were really closely guarded family secrets,
(08:16):
and each one had its own sort of quality or character.
And then also, you know, making your own whiskey fit
right in with the region's value of independence and like
the distrust of outside authority.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Totally, and also a connection like both of the land
and with the tradition of your family. So it's like,
who are you to get.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Involved the exactly. And then prohibition came and so that
was championed by Protestant temperance movements in the region. Yeah,
but it was also this cash cow for the Moonshiners.
They're like, we love prot Yeah sure, so they're the
demand for illegal mountain made whiskey just skyrock yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Them and the Canadians were like, okay, I love this.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
So we had these like one small family stills in
the Holler are suddenly shipping out to big cities Chicago,
New York. The criming became organized, and so you once
had a bartering tool, now it's just a straight up industry.
Prohibition ends, but the fight with the government continues. So
booze was legal right all of a sudden, But the
(09:19):
stills were still operating outside the law, and there was
this like total cat and mouse game between the ATF
that was called the Alcohol Tax Unit. Then and all
these Appalachian moonshiners agents were staging huge raids moonshiners. They
had to get more and more clever. They hid the
stills deep in the woods. They had these really elaborate
(09:41):
warning systems, and then they developed fast cars to outrun
the law on delivery runs. And thus was born NASCAR.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Go Watch Thunder Road to Robert Mitchell.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yeah, because they souped up their cars to outrun the revenuers.
But then they just started racing each other. That's the
natural instinct for and bragging rights. So by the seventies
and eighties, nineteen seventies and eighties, improved roads, economic development programs,
changing culture, Like we're kind of bringing about like the
(10:12):
death knell to traditional moonshining. So this romantic outlaw image
was fading as the practice became more associated with organized crime. Still,
no pun intended. Moonshining shaped the culture in these really
lasting ways. It influenced the music. There are a ton
of folk and countryside County, oh Yeah, I'll celebrate in
(10:35):
the moonshiner And it's in the storytelling, It's in this
culture of resistance to authority. It's in the cuisine. You know,
corn is like central to Mountain food ways. Moonshining holds
on as one of the most evocative symbols of Appalachian identity.
And I was pondering this, Sarin. Yeah, I was like
(10:56):
thinking about how it's at this crossroads of ingenuity, pop
independence and defiance, and that's kind of where we get
like the best American stuff. So some former moonshiners decided
to go legit. So you had states like Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia,
and Kentucky. They issued craft distillery licenses and Appleachian moonshine
(11:21):
became this like marketable brand. The mystique of that old
tradition gets reclaimed as heritage rather than criminality. And one
such man who went from outlaw to law abider to
outlaw is the guy I want to tell you about today.
To outlaw Zarin, Meet Marvin Popcorn Sutton.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Get out of town Wi Hopcornton Hopcorn Sutton.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
He was born in nineteen forty se Joe Biden besties
Total besties, popcorn. They fought, pulled out blades.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
He was born to go back to Delaware.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
He was born in nineteen forty six in Maggie Valley,
North Carolina. And that's sort of between Asheville, North Carolina
and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Yeah, right next to Great Smoky
Mountains National Park. And it was originally Cherokee Country. So
according to the Assembly magazine quote, his family had been
(12:16):
in western North Carolina in the area of Hemphill and Kataluchi,
as he put it in one interview, quote, as long
as time lasted. And so they lived off the land.
These people were just farming to survive, and they were
just like their neighbors all up and down the hallers.
His dad took whatever little gigs he could get. The
(12:36):
mom kept the home. She would churn butter and trade
that for groceries. In Waynesville, North Carolina, which was the
next biggest town, and that was the county seat. Today
that Waynesville has a population of like ten thousand people.
And that's the big one, that's the big rural. Yeah,
kids had to work too, popcorn quote. Grew up pulling
(12:59):
weeds for home and picking tomatoes for fifteen cents an hour.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah, yeah, not even by like the amount he pulls, No.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
By the hour. So Maggie Valley, which has a population
of about seventeen hundred people today, that at the time
was pretty much a crossroads. And now it's been developed
out first in the sixties because they put in an
amusement park, an amusement that closed in two thousand and three,
but then as the Chattaloochi Ski Area. That's the entry
(13:28):
point to it. So that's where they get, like there's motels.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
And all that the beginning of the tourists.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Yes, yes, but back when popcorn was a pop there
was only a small store which had one phone located
within the store. That was the one phone in two Yeah,
popcorn told people that the only time anyone used it
was to ring up the undertaker when someone died. It
was like the sole purpose of the phone. So there
is young Popcorn in Maggie Valley. When he was just
(13:55):
five years old, he was taught a trade. Five moonshininge.
That's how old he was when someone took him to
learn how to make this stuff. By the time he
was six, he's like world weary. He was smoking cigarettes
six years old. Six years old, so then by the
time he s double shift by the time he's sixteen.
(14:18):
Basically he decided to make a go of it and
distill his own brand of moonshine. Sixteen, he was years
into the year. He was not very good at it.
Those eleven years of instruction apparently didn't help. He called
it liquor. Oh wow, maybe that's why it didn't do
too well. But he wanted to get it right. He
decided to seriously work in the tradition of his daddy
(14:40):
and his daddy's daddy. Oh Graham peppy. Yeah, So he
decided to go like super old school with it. He
heated it with wood, he balanced out the heat using
fresh stream water. It was very much of the land
that was on like a sense of place totally, which
is kind of like Scottish whiskey about saying, yeah, the
(15:01):
terror aspects exactly in the process and in the materials
right right. And so this is how the og Scots
Irish did it. And I do need to note that
these aren't really Irish. There's Scots who were kind of
pushed out by the English. To quote settle in the
Ulster provinces in Ireland was to say, conquered Northern Ireland,
(15:22):
Northern Ireland, but then they got pushed out of the
Ulster Counties.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
You've seen the cool maps they do where people got
to settle in Americas from the Aisles. You see, like
this big arrow go right from there to the Appolis exactly.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
So, like the Scots were in the Ulster Counties and
they're starving. The Catholics don't want them there, and the
Anglicans who ran the place didn't want them there either.
No one wanted them. So they ran off to the
American colonies and no one wanted them there. Yeah, and
so they headed for the hills like Appalachian Piedmont regions.
It was rough living and that's when they like really
(15:56):
developed backwoods living. You know, corn liquor because they didn't
have barley like they'd use, you know in Ireland. So
corn liquor was medicine. It was currency. And now we
got popcorn. So now popcorn is around twenty years old,
and he had perfected his liquor and he was distilling
full time. And that's around the time that he earned
(16:18):
his nickname. According to the Assembly quote, around the same
time he picked up a fitting nickname for a corn
whiskey distiller when he attacked a coin operated popcorn machine
in a bar after it stole his dime. He snatched
up a pool cue and showed the damn thing what
he thought about it. It cost him fifty dollars and
(16:38):
earned him a nickname he would use for the rest
of his life. So let's stop there for an ad
They're like, corn all a good popcorn over there, whooping
on that machine. So we're gonna stop for an ad.
Our very own revenuers. This is the tax that we
all pay to listen to these tales of criminality. If
you think about it, and when we return, pop corn
(17:00):
gets popping.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Zaren Elizabeth thereon right.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
It's nineteen sixties, okay, that's where we are right now.
That's when Popcorn Sutton hit his stride making the legal
hoops in Appalachia. He got away with it for a bit,
but then he got busted. In the early seventies.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
He was like deep in the woods, oh yeah, because
you can always think and see the if you're burning
the fire, wach you're still the smoke will go up.
So they used to look for the smoke in the woods.
You like that shouldn't be got to go like way.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Oh yeah, so per the Greenville Sun quote. In nineteen
seventy five, Sutton was convicted in US District court on
numerous federal charges relating to the manufacturing and possession of
an unregistered still, having distilling apparatus, and untaxed liquor. He
was given probation not good. Yeah, And then he got
(18:08):
pinched again in nineteen eighty and this time it was
on a felony drug offense. He got a five year
suspended sentence.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Do you know what the drug was?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
I'm going to guess weed, so he.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Said, nineteen eighty so I had to open up, yeah,
right to the floor. Question.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
He got five years suspended sentence. That's not bad. And
then five years later he actually went to prison for
the first time. Nineteen eighty five, he got convicted of
assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Was another Sikes popcorn machine.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
I think it was a human popcorn. Enough, he's back out.
So during the eighties and nineties, he like late eighties nineties,
he went somewhat legit. He ran a junk shop on
the outskirts of Cherokee, North Carolina. And when I say
junk shop, I'm talking like old appliances, all these old
(19:00):
dusty bottles.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Folk arts, like stuff in a parking lot.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Basically old fill in the blank.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like this still got some life in it.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Yes, And you know it's like a dusty store. You
walk in and immediately you're like sneezing.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
In nineteen eighty seven printer and he's like, you still
got some life in it. You used matrix.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Like stores like this litter the rural South.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Oh yeah, they're not. They're little central California.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
And like more eclectic neighborhoods elsewhere, but they're in essence
dust factor. Yes, let's just be real. And so in
addition to selling all this old stuff, though, he also
sold new bruise.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
New bruise bottles.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Of moonshine were sold out of the back of the store.
So it's kind of like this speakeasy setup. You had
to know that he had it, and he had to
trust that you were cool about it. But then someone
squealed and the revenue one revenuers came a colin, you know,
someone I'm going to get you nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Eight damn revenue.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Uh, And they hit the jack pot in that picker's
paradise in the store, they came across popcorn still and
sixty gallons of white lightning.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
He had to still in his store, like in the basement.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
So, according to the Smoky Mountains National Park Blog, yes, quote,
while operating a distilling unit and selling illegal alcohol is
a felony punishable by up to five years in prison
and a fine up to ten thousand dollars. Popcorn Suddon
was not initially sent to jail. The judge instead put
him on probation and offered him an out with a
(20:32):
suspended sentence.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
You know, fair enough, hard well, there.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Must have been something really charming about old Popcorn.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I was wondering.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
And when you look at his picture, you see that
he's every inch the stereotypical old moonshiner.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Does he even have the long beard?
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Oh yeah, there's this one shot of him. He's like
sitting in a chair, he's holding a jar moonshine, and
he looks like an Appalachian philosopher king. Okay, he looks
like he lost a bet with a taxidermist because his
hat is like this leather contraption that a raccoon died
on top of, and it's decorated with feathers that were
(21:10):
stolen from a parrot who was probably like relieved to
be rid of them. And you talked about like the
long beard. The beard is less facial hair and more
like this separate living entity that has decided to colonize
his entire chest. It's just like it's like playing risk.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Just creeping down.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
It's like a tumbleweed that settled down and like got
married and raised a family there. And then he's got
these overalls on. Right, It's like that's the official uniform
of men who have zero interest in your opinions. So
many pairs of overalls he's got, like the plaid flannel shirts.
There's forty seven different colors and none of them were coordinated.
(21:53):
And to be together, it's Phil Billie's chic. He's iconic.
So I can see how people just couldn't make themselves
commit this character the jail. You need him in town, yes,
And he was a well known local.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Character as a local color and through.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
The Assembly magazine describes him as sort of holding court
in his junk shop. Nice and per the New York
Times quote, he lived in a cluttered cabin on a
wooded hill, where he also built his stills, gave pistols
to the incoming sheriffs, and fathered so many children that
no one has any idea of the exact accounting.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Fathered so many children, really using the word father, little colonels,
colonels throughout the countries, the children like a biblical spreading seed.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
I've made all kinds of liquor in my time, Hapcorn says,
tending the still. I've made the fighting kind, the love
and kind, the crime kind. I even made some one
time and sold to this couple. They was happily married.
Next damn week they was divorced. Yeah, the marriage buster,
the bestseller. So here's this guy. He's in his fifties,
(23:00):
but he looks way older.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
I'm thinking love seventies.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Oh yeah, Sinna's a rail He's got the droopy overalls,
a floppy hat. He walks all bent over from like
years and years of carrying heavy bags of sugar up
to his stills in the mountains. It is the age
of like seven.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
So like the Warner Brothers animators who did like like
all the old cartoons, will.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Be like, he is our role model completely. He's weathered, yeah,
and he looks like he's from this other time. But
he's still He had a cell phone and he watched TV.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
I knew he did that.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
He just had like the old timey aesthetic.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, he was walking tradition.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Yes, he restored a model.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
T Oh, really he drove it around.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
He would look.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Super on brand if he actually drove it around. No,
he it was garaged up and like he only took
it out on special occasions.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
His investment property.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Yeah, on the front bumper he painted mom corn in
all caps in front of the passenger seat and popcorn
in front of the driver's seats, just like hand painted.
Speaker 5 (24:01):
No.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Instead, he ran around in a nineteen eighty two Ford Fairmount.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Then he turned into a tutor.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
A Tudor. Yeah, it looks like it has a massive
engine and like if you glance quickly out of the
corner of your eye, you might think it's an El Camino.
Like it kind of has that long like the back
windows just like a slice of glass really, and the
trunk is like super long. So he got that car
by trading three gallons of moonshine for it. He called
(24:28):
it his three jug car, and he sold He sold
half gallon jars of corn liquor to a tourist for
twenty five bucks a pop, so that car ran him
about one hundred and fifty dollars. He didn't sell all
of his stuff in small batches to tourists though, like
he actually moved most of his product with bootleggers, like
hundreds of gallons at a time. We were just all
(24:52):
over the country.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
People come in. There was like, oh said, like a
blossoming of interest in Chicago.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
No, just you know those in the know. Wait, he
entered into the Ridiculous Crime Book Club in nineteen ninety
nine when he's self published Me and My Liquor spelled
l I k K E R.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Oh I I K K E R.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Yeah, Okay, yeah. The New York Times described it as
quote a rambling, obscene and often hilarious account of his
life in the trade.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
So it was like in the trade.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
A spiral bound affair and tons of photos, tons, all
black and white, and it was it's printed in this
sort of comic sands font and it starts with a
scan of his license to sell moonshine certificate from the
National Moonshine Association, signed by the mayor of Maggie Valley.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Okay, here's this, Like any is this the governing body? Yes, okay,
because it's like I.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Think I think he did. Here's how the narrative starts. Quote,
this book is all true. There is not a damn
thing in it that is not true. My name is
Popcorn Sutton, and how old of my It ain't nobody's
damn business. I've been making, drinking and selling liquor for
now on forty years. My granddaddy made drink and sold
(26:09):
liquor most of his life. People worry about liquor killing them.
I don't, because my granddaddy is proof it won't. He
smoked camel cigarettes just like I do. One after another.
He also drunk all the liquor he could get and
chase all the women he could. He lived to be
about ninety years old. So what in the hell am
I worried about? Not a damn thing.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I like a spirit, you know. I'm telling you this
is a man who knows who he is, where he
comes from, and where he's going.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
There's this photo of a rough looking woman in a
house dress and an old man seated next to her
on a floral sofa.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
So is this mom, Corny? No?
Speaker 3 (26:44):
No, the old guy's smoking a cigarette. There's like an
old vacuum cleaner in the background. Yeah, here's the caption.
This is smut Web and his wife, Lucille. Smut is
dead now. He's the one that teached me how to
make a damn moonshine still a long time ago.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Smut wob.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah he's dead now.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Case you're smutt case, here's your money now.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
So the whole thing is like sitting listening to some
guy ramble on a rocking chair on his front porch.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
And my time in the very rural South has made
me very familiar with this type of socializing. I bet
there's a lot of technical remembrances about the actual making
of the liquor, and then there are all these like
scattered rambling anecdotes. I'm gonna hit you with one more,
okay please, I have been worried all day. My doctor
come to see me yesterday and he told me, popcoin
(27:37):
noticed the spelling. You have only sixty two years to live.
It was my doctor. He is nobody's damn business. I
also had two of the best friends of my life
visit me, Tonny Moore and his wife Alice. Me and
Tonny Moore and all the More family goes back many years.
I used to get drunkard in Hell with Claymore. His brother,
played a guitar and sung a song Nobody's business.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Was I do.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
One time, me and Ken Moore was out one night.
We had just got bought a brand new Ford car.
I think it was a Toreno. We left Grassy Fork
headed to Newport, got the Hartford and then on the
I forty West, then onto the bluffting curve. Ken had
that god damn Ford wide open. This is the first
time I ever pulled a gun on a man to
(28:21):
get him to slow down. I told Ken, if we
are gonna die, by God, we're going together. I had
a Colt thirty eight cock right beside his head. That
damn car was on two wheels going round that bluff
and curve around one hundred miles an hour. No less,
I am sure we made it to Newport some damn way,
and I don't know how. We spent the night at
(28:41):
Ryinharts Bar and made it back to Grassy Fork the
same damn way, and I don't know how. Anyway, me
and Ken Moore was always best of friends, just as
the rest of the More family love.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Anyway, anyway, I love a Claymore no relation to the munition,
and Ken Moore, no relation to the truck.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
All the boys you know they are.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
One more. I was gonna ask, kidding me here you go.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
There are two things that I don't want a goddamn
thing to do with. That is bad moonshine and viagra.
I drunk some bad liquor one time, and it came
one tinker's damn killing me. I couldn't sleep, or I
couldn't just buy god pass out. Anyway, I did go
to sleep in the wee hours of the morning, but
(29:30):
when I did wake up, I was in a daze.
The bed I thought was by God spinning around and
all the ones that stopped spinning. Then I looked down
at the foot of the bed and there sat a
little purple eyed monkey with a pair of combat boots
staring at me. That's when I stopped drinking badass liquor
and the VIAGRAA to hell with it. Anyway, I ain't
(29:51):
over the hill yet. The hills therea.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Pills.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
So he released his book, which I now own as
a downloaded PDA. No, I'm not kidding you. Amazing y'all
send it to you and Not long after that, in
two thousand and two, Neil Hutchison made a documentary about
Popcorn called This is the Last damn Run of Liquor
I'll ever make. It's the name of it. A lot
(30:25):
of Hutchinson's work is focused on like cultures and transition
and all over the world, but a lot of it
in the South. And so initially the documentary was sold
out of the junk shop, and then it became this
like underground cult phenomenon, and then pretty soon the movie
and Popcorn were getting profiled in newspapers. Daniel Johnson celebrities
(30:46):
started coming calling, including good old Johnny Knoxville.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Of course Tennessee.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Yeah so he was, he was writ Yeah, I love that,
that's his name. And then there was a History Channel
documentary in two thousand and seven. Mark Ramsey, who was
a close friend of Popcorn's, told him, quote, old man,
you can't be a movie star and make liquor too,
and then Popcorn answered him, you can't sell it if
(31:12):
nobody knows you got it, like fair enough. Yeah. So
Popcorn was still a fixture in Maggie Valley, but by
this time he'd moved to eastern Tennessee just over the
state line, specifically Cock County. He told people that he
had a dual citizenship. He thought the move to Tennessee
would be better for business, and he had a bunch
(31:33):
of money from the movie and the History Channel thing,
and he wanted to move on up ok So per
the New York Times quote, nestled in the rocky embrace
of the Great Smoky Mountains, Cock County was a moonshine
center for as long as anyone here can recall. For
most families in a rugged place with few opportunities, it
was a matter of survival. But for an enterprising few,
(31:54):
making it and hauling untaxed and unregulated liquor became a profitable, dangerous,
and inevitably romanticized trade. Making moonshine later gave way to
growing marijuana, and by the nineteen sixties the county was
notorious for chop shops, cock fighting, rings, prostitution, and corrupt officials.
Over the decades, the lawless elements have been corralled for
(32:17):
the most part, but the batt old image of Cock
County lingers and irks and.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Irks when they got overrun by hippie outlaws, like we
want to take a shot at this list e actually.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
So like, of course, Bondcorn feels right at home naturally,
and so he set up shop outside Parrottsville, Tennessee, population
two hundred and seventeen. Wow, Parrotsville are just outside of it.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
That's like seven families too.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah, pretty much is home to Swaggerty Blockhouse. Okay, And
a blockhouse is basically a building that's used as sort
of like a fort with gun portals. And originally this
one was supposed to have been built by a settler
named James Swaggerty in seventeen eighty seven, but later inspection
determined that it was actually a anti lever barn built
by someone else in eighteen sixty, and it didn't stop
(33:05):
it from being listed on the US National Register of
Historic Places as the Swaggerty Blockhouse. There's a certain like
parks and w rec Pawnee quality that story I really liked.
So anyway, Popcorn he rented some land in Parrotsville and
then built himself a house on it on the rented land,
and it was decorated much like his junk shop, like
he had old license plates, like lude knickknacks, like I
(33:28):
think it's like ceramic salt and pepper shakers doing things
they should antique tools. He papered the ceiling with dollar bills.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Oh that's a that's a good look.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Cute.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
One of my favorite bars I go to has.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
To the Alley in Oakland. You know, they're all it's
like a fire trap. And so he also got himself
a banjo. He paid eight grand for it.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Eight grand?
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Could he play the banjo?
Speaker 4 (33:52):
No? No?
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Was it e scrugs banjo?
Speaker 3 (33:55):
He just he thought it was like a good looking accessory.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
He's like, this fits, this does he definitely is the
way to atesterize his look.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
And he prepaid for his funeral. So this was two
thousand and six. He's sixty years old. He bought a
coffin and then he ordered up his gravestone granted and
engraved on it was the following epitaph, Popcorn says you.
So this feels like the right time to take an
(34:22):
ad break and think about how that might be the
best grave marker ideas around. And when we returned Parrotsville.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Zaren Elizabeth.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
All right, so we talk on popcorn. Sutton infamous moonshiner.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
I'm so into this guy.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
He moved to Parrot'sville, Tennessee, and it was there that
he got three enormous stills running.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Oh, I thought you were going to say new baby
lamas well.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Probably I'm going to assume yes. And those babies look
so weird. They had beards. No, he had two eight
hundred gallon jobs and the third one held one thousand
and seven fifty gallons. Like chazam, that's some big stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
This is like, you know, enough water for a small
town if you had no water tower.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
He's like one of those AI centers. So he didn't
he didn't do these the old fashioned way with the
wood and the creek water. He ran these on unlighted gasoline.
And it was there that he stored all his hoots
jars in this stillhouse, as well as sacks of grain,
(35:49):
a couple thousand pounds of sugar. So let's think about
that gas, grain, sugar, Southern heats.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Everything you've said is explosive.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Yeah, it makes me think fire, either.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Fire or expos You've taken like, you know, non dairy
creamer and waved it over like an open flame. Yes, yeah,
can you realize, hey, kids, that's how bakeries catch fire.
This flower has energy, sugar has energy. Will they will burn.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Sarren just taught all the children the trick of non
dairy powdered non dairy creamer.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Yeah, shaking over an open flame and it'll first person
that's flash like a magician doing magic tricks.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
You're welcome, parents. So the Assembly magazine reported quote on
April twenty fourth, two thousand and seven, a faulty wiring
box ignited a fire in the stillhouse. There were dried
out timbers, sacks of green and sugar and gasoline to
feed the flame, and the fire was instantly out of control.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Oh, of course, Saren.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Close your eyes.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
You picture it.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
You are a firefighter with the Parrotsville Volunteer Fire Department.
You're sitting in the back of your mechanic's garage, tinkering
with a mini van someone brought in yesterday. As always,
you have your police scanner radio on and the emergency
alert pager on your belt. You're on call. The alarm
sounds and you jump up, ready for action. Will it
be a car accident, a heart attack?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Nope?
Speaker 3 (37:12):
You trot toward your pickup truck, ready to head to
the fire station and pick up the pumper truck. You
glance at the pager and you see it fire. You
look at the address.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
Hello.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Oh. Eight or so minutes later, you're standing in front
of the fire truck, staring at the giant column of
black smoke rising out of Popcorn Sutton Stillhouse. Dagnavit. The
fire chief is called in support from neighboring towns and districts,
and you are sure they, as you did, are following
the rising tower of smoke and embers to the scene.
(37:41):
And you know the Sheriff's deputies are on their way too.
You hear tires tearing up the gravel drive behind you.
You spin around, expecting to see those very same deputies,
but instead it's a blue Ford Fairmount, and behind the
wheel is Popcorn himself. The old Coots certainly does make
the finest moonshine you've ever sipped, but making that stump
(38:02):
water comes with wrists. Like the fire raging out of
control in.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Front of you.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Your fellow firefighters are doing their best to get an
under controlled. You're manning the pump on the truck and
backing up the chief as he tries to control the scene.
Popcorn races up to you. He tells you he has
three stills in there, plus a bunch of copper wire
of dubious origin, bags of sugar, bunch of sour mash.
You can't let the deputies see that stuff when they
(38:27):
get here, he says, maybe just let it burn a son.
You tell him, no, sir, you can't do that. You
don't want this to spread and catch the woods on fire.
Arcs of water spray behind you, pummeling the burning building
and steaming high into the air. Popcorn stares at a
school bus a few dozen feet from the stillhouse. Okay,
(38:47):
he tells, you, just let me go move my school
bus out of the way. No, you tell him, you
can't get that close to an active conflagration. You love
that word, conflagration. Popcorn tries to push past to you
anyway and get to the bus. You hold them back.
You can hear the sirens of the patrol cars approaching. Look, you,
little Popcorn seeds that you I got eight hundred and
(39:10):
fifty gallons of liquor in that there bus, and I
ain't going down on a possession charge like that. He's
a small man, but wiry and strong. His ropey muscles
work as hard as they can to wriggle free from
your brass. But you are a big old milk fed
country boy, man of the mountains. That old fella isn't
going anywhere. Popcorn takes one last long look at the bus,
(39:33):
exhales unlets his whole body sag. You don't fall for
those sorts of tricks, so you keep it in your clutches.
You hate to do it, but you gotta hand them
over to the deputies. You look up at the burning building.
Your c just about tamping that fire all the way out.
You side too arin. When the cops were finally able
(39:53):
to get into the burned out building, they found those
three stills, I bet they did. And they found thirty
seven half gallon jar a moonshine. Yeah. But then they
entered the untouched school, okay, and in there were eight
hundred and fifty gallons of white lightning. They had already
called in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ATF,
(40:15):
knowing full well what they'd find ATF, busted him in
no time. In July of two thousand and seven, Popcorn
was fined three thousand dollars and got two years probation
for possession of moonshine, plus another six months probation for
possession of a still. He felt invincible, like if he
could skate by on that kind of wrapped then there's
(40:36):
no need to fret and certainly no need to slow down.
In fact, he wanted to rebuild bigger and better than before.
He's exactly but here's the thing, like he's not like, oh,
I'm gonna go straight now.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
I got lucky on that one.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
The revenuers are relentless. They kept an eye on Popcorn.
And so a year after his sentencing on the fire
case and he's on probe Yes Yes, ATF discovered that
he had three stills again, and they came across this
information when Popcorn sold two hundred gallons of corn liquor
to an undercover agent. And Popcorn is like, look, i'll
(41:15):
give you a deal. It's fifty dollars a gallon, and
if you buy more than fifty gallons, the price goes
down to thirty bucks a gallon. It's a good deal,
and especially because there's no tax. What I love is
that Popcorn offered different flavors of moonshine. He had apple
pie that tasted like cinnamon and apple. He had cherry peach.
Like I knew a guy when I lived down south
(41:36):
who had a pilot'slicense and this little cessna, and he'd
fly it up to Tennessee, pick up gallons of moonshine,
and then fly it back down. And he didn't resell
the stuff. He just shared it and enjoyed it himself.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
My dad moonshine, and it.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
Was flavored stuff like I took a sip of the
peach one.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Oh it burned.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
It tasted terrible.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Yeah, moonshine. Guy tasted like old, like white lighting.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
And yeah, I don't see the purpose of get it.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
He gets to North Carolina to tell too much?
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Ay right, we're just using vague eas So anyway, it
wasn't just that the agent made the sale. He also
got video and in it you can see like a
bunch of guns in the background. Oh no, and then
there's popcorn being popcorn. Like he danced while he talked
to the guy, and he was waxing eloquent on the
specifics of how one goes about making moonshine, just like
(42:23):
in his book. Per the Greenville Sun newspaper quote the
week of March third, an undercover Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission
TABC agent had a phone conversation with Sutton, and Sutton
said he had five hundred gallons of moonshine to sell
in Tennessee and four hundred gallons to sell in Maggie Valley,
North Carolina. On March twelfth, two thousand and eight, Sutton
(42:46):
took an undercover TABC agent to a barn on Scott
Pond Road where three moonshine stills were located. So he's
just not even sensing that these are undercover. That place
on Scott Pond Road was the mother load.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
I can't believe he took him to. His mother loved more.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
Than eleven hundred gallons of sour mash, which would become
one hundred and thirty gallons a hooch. So that's proof
of not just possession but production everything. Government sees it all. Oh,
they came in Chronicles Magazine reported quote following Popcorn's arrest
ATF Special Agent James Kavanaugh proclaimed moonshine is romanticized in
(43:22):
folklore and in the movies. The truth, though, is that
moonshine is a dangerous health issue and breeds other crime.
Oh sta ain't lyon.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
I mean, yeah, sure, but like the dose makes the poison.
Anything can be a criminal act or eything can be
bad for your house. That's true if there's enough of it.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
So Popcorn he pleads guilty to possessing firearms and illegally
producing distilled spirits by distillation from mash and other material.
H his lawyer was like begging the court, begging the judge.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Do not let him on the stand.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
No, please, because he pleads guilty. He's like, he cannot
do time. He's two weak, he won't survive it. He
said that Popcorn was quote sixty two and looks like
he's eighty two. So he begged the judge please give
him probation.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Can you imagine how dehydrated his body? Oh my god,
his entire life.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
And so he then is like pleading his case for leniency.
The Greenville Son described the scene quote Sutton, wearing overalls
and a denim jacket, promised the court he would never
again make whiskey, doing so as he stood with a
walking cane during sentencing, and he said, I'd like to
die at home rather than in a penitentiary.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Oh yes, please, come on, wouldn't so.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
A bunch of Popcorn's neighbors in the area signed a
petition asking the court to have mercy on Popcorn. Here's
what they said. Quote, the undersigned are personally acquainted with
Marvin Popcorn Sutton. We trust him in any matters of
great importance in our everyday lives, and welcome him as
a neighbor. Considering his basic nature, age, and significant medical problems,
(45:03):
we asked the court to consider leniency in sentencing Popcorn,
and Popcorn he had just been diagnosed with cancer. Tip
oh for Christis the judge I was like, that's all
well and good, but he had yet to hear Popcorn
say he was sorry for what he'd done. And the
judge sid quote, Sutton seems to be proud of his
disregard for the law, and no sentence thus far has
(45:26):
deterred him from his continuing criminal activities.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
I want to legal fielty.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
So June Yeah. Basically January two thousand and nine, Popcorn
got sentenced to eighteen months in federal prison, and the
judge said he could quote self report to prison when notified,
and until then he's under house arrest. Now his whole life,
Popcorn had decided his own fate, like he'd set his
(45:52):
own course. Laws be damned, society be damned. Good sense
be damned.
Speaker 5 (45:58):
And then.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
He's confronted with a scenario that he couldn't work around
and that he couldn't control. He found a way to
choose his own path for the last time. On March sixteenth,
two thousand and nine, just four days before he was
supposed to report to prison, he connected the exhaust pipe
of his forward to a hose and you can figure
out the rest. So his daughter told the Knoxville News quote,
(46:22):
nobody was going to tell him what to do. He
did it his way. He always lived a death before
dishonor kind of life. Those factors gave Marvin the strength
to die the way he lived, according to his own
wishes and no one else's. And now before he died,
Popcorn wanted to make sure he had a legacy. It's
like he knew his end was near. So he worked
(46:44):
with this former professional supercross motorcycle racer named Jamie Grocer
to teach him the ropes. And Grocer wanted to get
into distilling spirits, but he wanted to do it legally
and pay the taxi.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
We handmake our labels.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Yeah, because it was like catching on culturally with the
Mason Jar aesthetic and stuff and so this way, it's
a quick way to do it too, because it goes
straight to market. You don't have to age it. So
Grocer told Halma Today this newspaper quote. He kept teaching
me what he'd learned. He told me, no one else
knows what you know, and he was methodical about passing
(47:21):
it along. So Grocer and his business partners asked Popcorn
who he'd like to work with for a celebrity tie in,
and Popcorn is like, there is only one person, one person.
Hank Williams Junior, of course, Cephas Bosiphis told Halma Today,
(47:41):
quote My initial reaction was I have zero interest, none,
But then they showed me Popcorn's whole story and I
related to him and I admired him. Here was the
last real Moonshiner, and Moonshine has been so connected to
the music and to the South. It used to be everywhere.
So eventually Popcorn's wife, Pam, and the distiller marketed Popcorn
(48:06):
Sutton's Tennessee White whiskey and they used Popcorn's og Backwoods recipe,
handcrafted and all that, and then that kind of petered out,
and then Pam started working with a guy named Joe
Baker and they developed Popcorn Sutton Bourbon Whiskey blend and
Popcorn Sutton liquor. L like KK e er so in
a way, popcorn lives on. So Zarin was here ridiculous takeaway.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
I've got to get my hands on some of this
liquor with two k's enjoying myself a fine night in
honor of popcorn.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
Yeah, raised wind to pop p Oh.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
I love his story. I mean, this is some real
life Duke Brothers stuff, but I mean, like the outrageousness
of it, the whole Uncle jessiness of it is just incredible.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
Well, we talk so much about characters. We love the characters,
and this guy's just pure character.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Yeah, he's got so much character enough for like two
three people. Yes, exactly, Elizabeth, what's your ridiculous takeway?
Speaker 3 (48:58):
I you know, I think like he I just keep
going back to character that he's He's this prototype and
this almost stereotype, but you see all the little individual
things he brings to the whole experience. And I know
I've been sitting on this story for a while because
of the way he went out. I wasn't sure if
that was something to talk about, But then I thought no,
(49:21):
you know that's part of his lord and his legend,
and it's just it's a fascinating story. And how quickly
he had to grow up, you know, six years old,
smoking cigarettes and like all the things that he kind
of accomplished totally self created. Amazing.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
I don't imagine there was a lot of schooling involved,
apprenticeship there, but none internships. It's very much a self
directed path, very much, you know what.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
I think I need that talk back, Dave.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (50:05):
I like you, Hey, producer, Dave, Elizabeth and Zarin. This
is Ada from Wyoming and I'm listening to your Pippin'
Outlaw episode, and you were laughing about him joining the
rodeo team. So I thought you'd find it amusing to
know that my community college in my hometown lost some
(50:26):
funding a few years ago and so they had to
get rid of all the sports teams except for rodeo.
So now the only sport we offer his rodeo, and
it brings in a ton of people from Canada all over.
Speaker 3 (50:40):
I love it. It's awesome and I love that it
brings all these people in over the border. Hard draw
community college sports, so big ups.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Hopefully they give out a really good belt.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
You know they do. They got an awesome belt. That's
it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous
Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Blue
Sky and on Instagram. We're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime pod,
email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, and most importantly,
download the free iHeart app and leave us a talkback.
(51:19):
Please reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton
and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Kombucha Brewer to
the Stars Dave Cousten. Our Ridiculous assistant is Terry Pretzel's Maldonado.
Fon research is by Marissa Pictato, Chip Brown and Jabbari
(51:40):
cheese Stick Davis. The theme song is by Thomas Ritz,
Cracker Lee and Travis Peanut. Dutton post wardrobe is provided
by Botany five hundred producer Dave Coustin's wardrobe by mister
Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot
and Mister Andre. Executive producers are undercover atf agents Ben
Bollen and Noel.
Speaker 4 (51:59):
B Ridicous Crime Say It one More Timeous Crime.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts
from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Elizabeth Dutton
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