Nelson Eddy: One of the things that we've been told is maybe when George Patton shipped his tanks overseas that they weren't just filled with gasoline. There may have been several cases; many, many cases of Jack Daniel's on board those tanks as they headed overseas.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: In ways both structured and informal, the paths of U.S. military branches and Jack Daniel's have crossed many times over the course of the distillery's history, the iconic black label of Old Number 7 Tennessee Whiskey is viewed as quintessentially American, and for troops stationed around the world. It's a powerful reminder of home. On this episode of Around the Barrel, we talked to Jack Daniel's historian Nelson Eddy about the history of Jack in the military, and how the company supports troops today with a program called Operation Ride Home. Welcome back to Around the Barrel, the official podcast from the makers of Jack Daniel's. I'm your host, Lucas Hendrickson. The branches of the United States military: Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and the Coast Guard are potent symbols of the idea of America and the people serving in those branches frequently give what Abraham Lincoln called the last full measure of devotion in preserving and defending freedom. To many, Jack Daniel's draws a parallel to the idea of freedom, and the merging of Tennessee whiskey and America's fighting forces has a storied history. Nelson Eddy has spent the last three decades telling Jack Daniels' story, first as a public relations professional, and now as the company's historian.  He has seen up close what the company has done in this century to directly support troops heading home from missions around the world. 

 

Nelson: Hello. My name is Nelson Eddy. I'm originally from Brighton, Michigan. I'm now from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, which is an outskirts community of the great Lynchburg, Tennessee, and I'm the Jack Daniel's historian.

 

Lucas: Nelson Eddy, welcome to Around the Barrel.

 

Nelson: It's good to be here. 

 

We are very excited to talk to you and I'm sure we'll dip into your knowledge well many, many times as we go across this show, but talk a little bit first about how you got involved with Jack Daniel's. 

 

Nelson: Well, I started with the company 30 years ago in 1987. The brand was introducing its first new whiskey in a century, I know that's hard to believe with all the new whiskeys it's introduced, but in '87, it was the first new whiskey. It was Gentleman Jack Rare Tennessee Whiskey, at that time it was called The Hilltop project, and I was just a young PR guy and they invited me in to learn more about the brand and since Jack Daniel's brands are based on history and truth, there was a lot of research that went into that brand and so in the midst of that I acquired a lot of knowledge, a lot of that was transferred from people that had worked on the brand 40 and 50 years, and it's been my good fortune for the last 10 years to serve as the Jack Daniel's historian.

 

Lucas: So this show, this episode focusing specifically on the brand's interaction with the U.S. military, what was kind of the origin of that? When did the folks at the distillery kind of put together an informal, which would then has obviously over the years become formal, relationship with the military branches?

 

Nelson: Well, you know, whiskey and the military goes back in this country. I mean, there's a strong affinity for each other in this country goes back to the very beginning. George Washington, his troops had a ration of whiskey, or strong liquor as he would call it in that day, and that was a practice that happened with the military in the U.S. up until 1832. You wouldn't think about having a unit without daily rations of whiskey or some kind of strong liquor, but in 1832 that changes, and then it had to be for medicinal purposes through the military doctors. I imagine there were a lot of prescriptions that were written during that time as there were during Prohibition, but that's kind of the beginning. The other tie that the military and whiskey has in general is, it seems like whiskey has paid for a lot of our early wars. Again, George Washington will institute a tax on whiskey to help pay for the Revolutionary War and then later Abraham Lincoln will institute a tax on whiskey to help pay for the Civil War, and its that tax on whiskey that Jack Daniel's is first in line to pay, and it's why we're the oldest registered distillery today. 

 

Lucas: Talk about that designation of the oldest registered distillery in the U.S., just briefly kind of explain how important that designation is to not only the company's history, but also that timeframe, which it first started. 

 

Nelson: Yeah. It's now. I've got to admit. It's a controversial designation. I mean, people will challenge it and is it that you've been in continuous operation? Or you're still in operation? There's a lot of controversy that swirls around that designation but it's a designation that goes back to Jack, it's something that he reported, and it's not really that important except to say we're "old." What's more important is that we continue to make the whiskey as we did back in Jack's day, and that's far more important is remaining true to who you are rather than trying to prove something like that from the past. 

 

Lucas: So in going back to the relationship with the military, what was the distillery able to kind of, I don't want to say "use" the military for, but there were certainly elements of it that raise the public profile of the product, of the whiskey itself, as military units were exposed to it. 

 

Nelson: Yeah, I mean, let me step back and look a little bit and talk, you know, the military and Jack Daniel's, it's tied to both Jack the man and Jack Daniel's the brand. Most people don't know that Jack's real name is Jasper Newton Daniel, that his grandfather immigrated from the British Isles. He comes to this country prior to the Revolutionary War and he will fight in the Revolutionary War. So you've got that tie to the family and his grandson, Jasper Newton, who we know as Jack, is actually named after two Revolutionary War heroes, sergeants Jasper and Newton. These two American heroes rescued 10 prisoners that were being held by the British, and it was such a big deal that today, if you go to Texas, I think there's like 60 cities around the country that are named after either Jasper or Newton and if you go to Texas, you'll find a Jasper County, with Jasper as it's county seat next to it. You'll find a Newton County with Newton as it's county seat. So when they named Jack Daniel "Jasper Newton", he really had a pretty big name to live up to, and maybe that's part of the reason Jack becomes so independent and he's always he's this five foot two diminutive little guy that lives a life larger than his stature and maybe part of that's inspired by these Revolutionary War heroes that he's named after, so you have that tie, and then you know, it's almost like war put Jack Daniel's into business. He was working for Dan Call, a Lutheran minister in Lynchburg and it's at the Dan Call farm he learns how to make whiskey, this is prior to emancipation. So he's working alongside the guy who runs the still, is an enslaved man by the name of Nearest Green. Well, Dan Call leaves to go off and fight the war and he leaves Jack Daniel and that enslaved man Nearest Green in charge of the still. And that's Jack's first taste of that, and it's not long after that, after the Civil War that Jack will go into business for himself with Nearest Green and too part of the reason Jack buys the Lutheran minister Dan Call's still is because during the Civil War there's this religious fervor that sweeps through the country trying to help people deal with all the death and destruction they've seen, and during that religious fervor, Dan Call's wife and his congregation come to him and say "Hey, you're our spiritual advisor in two ways and you're going to have to give up one of those spirits." You know, either stick to preaching or stick to making whiskey. And Dan Call decides to stick with preaching and so he sells his still to Jack Daniel and Jack Daniel since emancipation has taken place during you know, after the Civil War, Nearest Green is free and he becomes Jack's hired first Master Distiller. So the Civil War really puts Jack Daniel into business and later, you know, the American military will really propel the Jack Daniel's brand. 

 

Lucas: So, large-scale conflicts coming along next. What was the distillery's operation looking like in by World War I and then how has it changed and become a very different thing by World War II?

 

Nelson: In World War 1 the distillery will cease making alcohol except for military purposes and there are grain rations during the wars because they're going to use that Number One grade corn that we'd make our whiskey out of for military purposes. And Jack Daniel's would never make whiskey if it wasn't with Number One grade corn. So they've always ceased operation during those times of rationing and by World War II though, World War II is like pivotal in the history of Jack Daniel's as it is for this country in the military.  Just outside of Lynchburg in the next county over, Lynchburg is in a dry county, so people head to that next county to buy their whiskey, but there's Tullahoma. And Tullahoma during World War Two was home to a military base called Camp Forrest and about a half a million American soldiers between 1945, actually between 1941 and 1945, will train there in Tullahoma, and part of the maneuvers and training will be done on Motlow land, which has been donated for this purpose. So much artillery fire takes place on Motlow land that it said for years you couldn't cut down a tree without dulling your saw for all the lead that was in the trees. So they train on Motlow land, Patton will train his division, his tank division there, have maneuvers on Motlow land, and the Motlows befriend Patton, they befriend a lot of American troops, they're handing out whiskey, and of course a lot of the military men stationed there during this time period are buying whiskey, they all go off to war. When the war is over and they come home, they spread out all over the country, back to their homes. And guess what they're looking for? They're looking for their last taste of America, which was Jack Daniel's whiskey, and our distribution just takes off across the country. And this begins, you know in the 50s. By the 50s, there's so much demand for Jack Daniel's whiskey in the U.S. that we're under allocation, which means we're not making enough for all of the demand. We tell a liquor store or a distributor how many cases they could have. They couldn't have all they wanted, and that short supply of Jack Daniel's makes it something sought over across the country, that goes on until 1979. For over 20 years, you can't get enough Jack Daniel's in this country, and that really makes, builds the prestige of the brand, builds desire for the brand, and that's all largely part in parcel because of the military. There's also a guy by the name of Frank Sinatra who aided that, but...

 

Lucas: He made it a little bit cool, right?  But the military also played a very important role in helping Jack Daniel's become an international export. How did that situation come about? 

 

Nelson: Well, well, it's helped and both hindered. There's a couple of ways it's helped. One way it's helped is that there's some people, now this has never been proven, this is part of the mythology that surrounds Jack Daniel's and there's certainly plenty of that... 

 

Lucas: Sure, which we're going to touch on a lot in the show, obviously.

 

Nelson:  ...but one of the things that we've been told is maybe when George Patton shipped his tanks overseas that they weren't just filled with gasoline, that there may have been several cases of Jack Daniel's, many, many, cases of Jack Daniel's on board those tanks as they headed overseas. That's the story. And that some of those bottles of whiskey, as there's some liberation done across the pond, get handed out.  Because to this day there are some places that we've gone and introduced Jack Daniel's where there's been a familiarity with it that we can't entirely explain, one explanation might be Patton, of course, the other explanation is the popularity of American movies, which many of them include references to Jack Daniel's.  

 

Lucas: Absolutely. To this day, the U.S. military is the largest buyer of Jack Daniel's Single Barrel product. How does the military go about the Single Barrel process in a way that's that's similar or different to traditional customers? I mean, it's obviously, you know, if you want to get as granular as you as you want, you can literally go and taste samples from and choose your individual barrel. How did the Single Barrel program come about? And how does the military go about making those decisions?

 

Nelson: I mean the whole idea of the military, some ceremonial thing around Jack Daniel's, goes back even before the By the Barrel program, coming back from World War II there were many units who would buy a bottle of Jack Daniel's and say the last person standing will open this bottle and toast their fallen comrades, and so in the last few years we've seen this wave of newspaper stories about the last remaining World War II Vet from a certain unit opening the bottle of Jack Daniel's that's been sealed for all these years to toast his fellows. So let's move ahead. There's a lot of camaraderie in the military and Jack Daniel's is often at the heart of camaraderie. And so many of those units either before they're deployed, some of them even while they're still at base, they'll gather together and purchase through the base, a barrel of Jack Daniel's. And to this day, you're right. They are the number one purchasers of Jack Daniel's By the Barrel. I think that says something about the shared character of Jack Daniel's and military personnel. There's a researcher by the name of Douglas Holt who's really looked into this and he says there's something about that black label in the graphics and that strong, square package that the freedom-loving aspect of the brand and that idea that it's for people with kind of a code of honor, they're self-reliant, that matches up well with pioneers, and cowboys, and today the military. And so there's really a shared character and shared spirit between the two and it's something the brand has certainly benefited from and we have a great admiration for people who really put their lives on the line to defend the freedom that we enjoy as a company, as a brand, and as a people.

 

Lucas:  And that kind of idea carried its way into the first kind of official relationship with the USO that started in 2004 with a program called Toast to the Troops, talk a little bit about that. 

 

Nelson: Yeah, we had, you know back in 2004 we've got a lot of troops stationed overseas in the desert. So, Jack Daniel's thought you know one way that we could kind of thank these people who have been so good to us and are so good to our country is to provide care packages and this would be the care package. You know, there's no Jack Daniel's in it, much to the chagrin of people who may have opened them up, but there were the kind of things they would need out there whether those were you know, hand wipes, whatever kind of things to make deployment in a desert a little easier. But it wasn't just about the care packages going to the military. It was involving the military families back at home. We'd have a stuffing party in which we invited military families to give them something to do, something that they felt they could do to support the troops. We'd gather them around a concert which we would invite them to, and Craig Morgan himself a veteran performed many of those concerts, and they would stuff these care packages. And we did about 7,500 to 10,000 of these packages per concert and over the course of years from 2004 to 2011. There were 200,000 care packages stuffed around the country and sent over to our military.

 

Lucas:  But one of their most requested items in the feedback coming back was some Jack Daniel's paraphernalia right? They couldn't get the whiskey itself, but bandanas and things like that. They wanted that taste of home. 

 

Nelson:  Well, there was one other component in these care packages besides the Jack Daniel's shirts and hats and those kinds of things, but there was one thing that really meant a whole lot to them. And that was what we call the Toast of the Troops, in addition to all of this material. We invited people around the country, whether they were Jack Daniel's lovers or not, to participate by just writing a word of encouragement on what we call the Toast Card, and these Toast to the Troops were part of the packages, and over and over and over again, it wasn't just the stuff, it was the heart of the people of this country and the toast and the words of encouragement that they offered that were a real special part of those packages. 

 

Lucas:  That relationship has now morphed into another program called Operation Ride Home.  Put together that movement from care package to helping service members that are coming home and just want to make it home to see their families. 

 

Nelson:  Well over time, thankfully, fewer and fewer troops have been deployed around the world. There still are people out there. But as more and more of our troops came home, there was kind of a shift in emphasis and we discovered around the holidays that there were a lot of the junior enlisted military men and women and their families that didn't have the budgets that allowed them to go home from their bases to get home to relatives around the holidays, around the important dates like birthdays and anniversaries. And so, we switched emphasis to something we called Operation Ride Home, in which we provided, it could be gas cards, it could be airplane tickets, it could be just money to help overnight stays, whatever it is. We provided that kind of resource to help these military men, women, and their families and children get home for holidays and important dates. We did this with money from the corporation but it was also money, our distributors have joined in, you know, people out there in liquor stores have provided funds, and people who like Jack Daniel's or just think a great deal of the program have all contributed money and because of that more than a million dollars has gone to sending thousands upon thousands of military personnel and their families back home during the holidays, and if folks would like to learn more about that, they can check out JDOperationRideHome.com online and find out more information about what that program is all about. 

 

Lucas: Can you share some of the kinds of feedback you've gotten from these military families regarding Operation Ride Home? I mean I have to imagine that some of that communication is pretty emotional. 

 

Nelson: It is. I mean, if you think about people who are defending our country and defending our homeland might not have the resources to get home to their family during the holidays when they're in the same country, you know, these are people who are going home to see, you know, fathers and mothers who might be recovering from a surgery or an illness and there's some worry, will they see them again? You can imagine all of the emotional stories and emotions that play into that, but you know, really it's our effort to say thank you and to invite others who appreciate the service to help us and giving a great big thanks and there's no place people would rather be during the holidays than home.

 

Lucas: And the great thing about that program is it is a year-round endeavor, there's certainly a focus on promotional purposes, you know, it hits around the holidays, but it's a year-round need, obviously, for those service members. 

 

Nelson: Absolutely, it's not just the holidays. That's the time when you know, this sort of thing comes to the attention of the general public certainly, but there are birthdays and anniversaries, important family days, or important family needs to get home for whatever reason and we'd like to be able to step in, and so we are trying to expand that to a 12-month program to help out our enlisted personnel. 

 

Lucas: What other kinds of partnerships with the U.S. Military are in place or in the works or was there anything new and upcoming that the company is working on? 

 

Nelson: Well, right now our effort is primarily behind Operation Ride Home and you'll find many of the fundraising that we do around the country in different regards, we're currently working with the NBA and they're participating in this Operation Ride Home, so it's really an effort and an emphasis for us right now, but we're certainly always open to ideas to how we could help the military. 

 

Lucas: You've gotten to look at this these relationships up close for the last three decades plus now, why do you think Jack Daniel's holds such a special place in the hearts of the military community?

 

Nelson: You know, there's so many reasons. I mean the whole idea of camaraderie, the bond that's formed when people make that kind of sacrifice together, freedom-loving, you know, Jack Daniel's has been a symbol of freedom. And so I think there's that kind of tie, and a symbol of, you know, self-reliant and strong personality and character, and I think those are all things that can be ascribed to our military personnel.

 

Lucas: Nelson Eddy, Thank you for visiting with us this first time and I'm sure we'll talk to you many, many, more times as we go down the road Around the Barrel.

 

Nelson: Well, thank you very much for inviting me. I have enjoyed it and most of all thank you for all those military folks who might be listening to this. Our hats are off to you at Jack Daniel's.

 

Lucas: Around the Barrel is the official podcast of the Jack Daniel Distillery. Follow the podcast on the web at JackDaniels.com/podcast, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, and review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you gather your on-demand audio.  Always remember, with great podcast and great whiskey, please enjoy responsibly. Join us next time for more conversations Around the Barrel.

 

Your friends at Jack Daniel's remind you to drink responsibly. Jack Daniel's and Old Number 7 are registered trademarks, copyright 2018, Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof, distilled and bottled by Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around the Barrel is intended for listeners 21 years of age and older.