Many outlets, including our own, reported Popcorn Sutton had been diagnosed with cancer in his later years, this is the real story
As someone whose newspaper covered the final trial of โPopcornโ Sutton, I donโt need Google to remember the milestones of the moonshinerโs final days. Today, weโre going to talk about a myth thatโs grown up in the years since Sutton took his own life. Itโs a myth I may have inadvertently had a hand in making.
When facing federal prison time, legendary moonshiner Marvin โPopcornโ Sutton asked the court to consider his illness. After Sutton took his own life rather than go to prison, the myth has arisen he was battling cancer. Recently, I had the opportunity to ask Popcornโs widow Pam once and for all about his health. While Popcorn indicated he was ill in his final days, he was never diagnosed with cancer.
IN THIS ARTICLE
Did Popcorn Sutton have cancer?
He did not. At the celebration of the partnership between Ole Smoky Moonshine and the Sutton estate, I asked Pam the question directly. She confirmed Sutton had not been diagnosed with cancer. He had indicated he was ill to the court but had never claimed cancer.
After years of officials in authority looking past Suttonโs lawless ways, things got serious. Sutton had been running moonshine in the mountains of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina for decades. Heโd had a few brushes with the law over the years but for the most part, operated as something of an open secret. Towards the last decade of his life, Sutton essentially flaunted his operation in law enforcementโs face. There were popular videos and books about his life and his โlikker.โ How open was Popcorn about making moonshine? The New York Times wrote about him, so pretty open.
By the time authorities busted him with somewhere in the vicinity of 900 gallons of illegal moonshine in two states, he was a legend. A brilliant self-marketer, Sutton looked and sounded the part of a mountain moonshiner. He wore a long, scraggly beard and was frequently seen in his โoverhauls.โ His fedora-style hat was complete with a โcoon pecker boneโ attached to the front. He had a reedy voice and talked in the vernacular of the mountain folk with a liberal application of curses. Sutton was a natural in front of the camera and was in multiple documentary-style films. He was โ toward the end of his life โ an unlikely underground folk hero of sorts.
But ultimately, Judge Ronnie Greer sentenced him to serve 18 months in federal prison. Rather than report to prison, he got in his car and took his own life via carbon monoxide poisoning. He was 62.
Popcornโs legacy today
In the weeks, months and years after Popcornโs death, there were several attempts to bring his moonshine to market. After a change of the law, legal moonshine distilleries became and thing and suddenly and posthumously, Popcorn was in demand. However, those efforts never quite got a foothold.
Enter Joe Baker. Baker โ the founder of the massively successful Ole Smoky Moonshine โ has family roots that run deep into the East Tennessee hills. Over the years heโs built a reputation for building a successful business that manages to honor the regionโs history without exploiting it. And so, heโs built a partnership with Suttonโs widow that appears strong enough to last. For whatever complications his legacy may bring, Popcorn Suttonโs reputation for being the best moonshine maker in the region lingered. The fact that Pam and Popcornโs running buddy and partner JB Rader attest to the quality carries a lot of weight.
Is Popcorn’s moonshine the best?
Is Popcornโs moonshine the best? Itโs hard for me to say. As a local, I quite frankly turned my nose up at the commercial moonshine operations for quite some time. Iโve got a guy who has a guy and I can get โrealโ moonshine whenever I want. That being said, Iโm not sure my moonshine palate is that sophisticated. Iโve never done the Pepsi moonshine taste test, as it were, and I donโt have any stash of moonshine that Popcorn made before he died. I guess that Popcorn made the good stuff, but his knack as a marketer fluffed his reputation somewhat. Was he the best? The consensus is that he was very good, I think weโll leave it at that.
In summary, Popcorn Sutton was a legendary moonshiner whose legacy lives on through a series of books and documentaries. It lives on through a partnership between a legal Smoky Mountain Moonshine distillery and his widow Pam. Itโs a legacy that still draws attention and questions to this day. Questions that include whether he had cancer when he took his one life in 2009. That, at least, is one piece of his legacy we can definitively answer. He did not.