Popcorn Sutton: The Making and Marketing of a Hillbilly Hero

by Tom Wilson Jester, Don Dudenbostel (Photographer)

For three years leading up to the death of Popcorn Sutton, writer Tom Wilson Jester and photographer Don Dudenbostel recorded the complex life of Popcorn through photographs, digital soundtracks, and writings. The text and 70 black and white photographs give an up close look taking you beyond the myth of this legendary moonshiner. In this book, you will find Popcorn's handwritten recipe for making moonshine and detailed photographs of his moonshining operation taken one and a half hours prior to the still burning to the ground and his arrest. Popcorn Sutton is probably the most famous Appalachian moonshiner of all time. This is the story of the Popcorn Sutton you don't know.

72 pages, Paperback

First published March 7, 2012

About the author

Tom Wilson Jester was born in the foothills of the Appalachian South, in Fort Payne, Alabama. He began his writing career as a newspaper reporter in his home state after graduating from the University of Alabama in 1967, moving to Knoxville in 1969 to get a master's in journalism from the University of Tennessee. Tom stayed in the area where he's had a career on the creative side of media to the present day, working first as an advertising agency copywriter, then as a freelance writer/producer. This book grew out of the three-year Vanishing Appalachia project Tom and Don Dudenbostel did for the East Tennessee History Center to document with photography and field recordings the disappearing culture of "old Appalachia." Tom and his wife Jenny live in Lenoir City, Tennessee.