Around the Barrel - Transcript: Ep043/Re043 Green Family

 

Jerome Vance:  When Jack lost his mother, he left home in search of something that he was missing. He found a family in Dan Call and Nearest Green. This company from the very beginning is built on the foundation of family and it still continues to this day. It's very common to work with brothers and sisters just like us.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: The greatness of an endeavor rarely resides in a single name. Sure, there might be one name on the company door, but anything worth doing, especially over more than 150 years, takes a universe of names lending their skills and talents to the effort. On this episode, we talk with descendants of Nathan "Nearest" Green, the man now known to have helped teach young Jack Daniel how to make whiskey, about the stories they heard growing up of their families work at the distillery, about how the recent amplifications of those stories were both heartbreaking and heart-filling, and how their own work with the company has brought them pride over the decades around the barrel.

 

Lucas: Welcome back to Around the Barrel, the official podcast from the makers of Jack Daniel's. I'm your host Lucas Hendrickson. Draw a line, starting more than 15 decades ago, from Nathan "Nearest" Green and fill it with the names of his descendants who have worked for the Jack Daniel Distillery and that line will be unbroken. As more has become known about not only Nearest's role in the earliest days of the Jack Daniel Distillery, but also the Green family line's ongoing work with the company, it helps to underscore the idea of family, both biological and chosen, working together side-by-side in this small Middle Tennessee town making the world's most famous whiskey. Recently, the company honored that family tradition with the renaming of Barrel House 114 as the George Green Barrel House, after one of Nearest's sons and one of Jack Daniel's most trusted co-workers during the earliest days of the distillery. Members of the Green family converged on Lynchburg that day, including current distillery employees, Debbie Staples, Jerome Vance, and Jackie Harden, to celebrate the honoring of their family's legacy. But maybe more importantly, after a very trying year, hug some necks.

 

Debbie Staples:  Hi, I'm Debbie Staples and I work in bottling.

 

Jerome: Hi, my name is Jerome Vance and I'm a foreman in the warehousing department.

 

Jackie Harden:  I'm Jackie Harden and I work in bottling.

 

Lucas: Debbie, Jerome, and Jackie, welcome to Around the Barrel. Thanks for taking some time with us today. We brought you guys together because A) you are family and B) you work here, and, C) obviously, you are directly related to the Green family line as has been highlighted, especially over the last several years as that story continues to unfold and be uncovered and really be celebrated in a lot of ways within the distillery. Tell us about your individual relationships along that line. Who are you related to directly?

 

Debbie: My grandmother was Annabelle Eady Green, "Green Eady," and she is the daughter of Jesse Green, who is Nathan Green's son.

 

Lucas: All of you? Same?

 

Jerome: Yes.

 

Debbie: Brothers and sisters, yes.

 

Lucas: Brothers and sisters. Okay. And you all grew up around here and have been affiliated with the distillery for quite some time. How long have each of you worked here?

 

Jackie: I got 26.

 

Lucas: I've been here 26.

 

Debbie: I've been here forty-something.

 

Lucas: So they're the rookies, essentially, within the family and you're the veteran, shall we say, in the midst of all this?

 

Debbie: I guess. I'm the oldest, too, of our family.

 

Lucas: How many siblings? Is it just the three of you? Or are there more?

 

Debbie: Seven.

 

Lucas: Seven? What was it like for you guys growing up around this area? You've been not only affiliated with the distillery, but in this area for quite some time. What was it like when you guys were growing up?

 

Jerome: Growing up here, it was a lot of time just spent with family and friends. So, that's what we did growing up.

 

Debbie: Yeah. There's not a lot to do in Lynchburg so we just hung out. Right there at my grandmother's.

 

Lucas: Right. So have you all always known, as a family, what that relationship with Nearest and Mr. Jack were growing up? And then, what has it been like over the last several years as, again, that story has been uncovered, retold, amplified, and just clarified in a lot of ways, not only around the company, but around the world.

 

Jerome: The last few years, it's been different because the story wasn't told for so long, and now that everyone else knows his contributions to the company, it's been amazing, but it's also been bittersweet because our grandmother that told us about her family and about her dad and her granddad making whiskey, she's not here to finally – the world finally knows what she was telling then.

 

Lucas: What are your earliest memories of the Nearest Green story growing up? Obviously it sounds like your grandmother was the primary conduit for that. What do you remember hearing about first as you were growing up and getting ready to start working here?

 

Jerome: I think my first memories are really being a little boy and being outside playing. My grandmother, she got up early. She prepared breakfast for her kids that worked here. My uncle Wilson worked here and my uncle "Bus" worked here and she would literally have breakfast, lunch, and dinner ready for them. And when she got a chance – she made us stay outside, of course, back then kids did not play in the house.

 

Lucas: Didn't need you getting in the way of making breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

 

Debbie: And we better be there when it was time.

 

Jerome: So Jack Daniel's has always been a part of our lives as far as that goes. But when she got a chance to be outside, she would see the barrel trucks go by and she would tell you about her daddy and her granddaddy and her uncles and, to her, she was telling the story of Jack Daniel's, but really, she just wanted us to know who her family was. You know, she wanted all her grandkids to know all their families. So, the stories she was telling is... you'll hear the stories of Jack Daniel's when you do the tour, she was telling us the same stories but she was telling us about her daddy and her granddaddy.

 

Debbie: As a kid, I can remember coming and playing up and down these streets here in what we call the holler. She talked about how he made whiskey. But as a kid that's not really a big deal. I mean, Jack Daniel's wasn't a big deal to me. So, to hear her tell how they was – she could look out at the warehouses and she would talk about all this whiskey. So we knew the story. As Romey said, she was trying to teach us about her family. But as a kid, you don't really take all that in. And I couldn't put it together. I never really thought about it until I got older. And as I got older, and then when I came to work here and I started hearing stories, I didn't really know the history except for what she had told us. I knew that Nathan Green was a slave because my grandmother was almost a hundred when she passed. So I knew he was a slave with no education, but he was a smart man. And to think about how he was able to make whiskey, and it wind up being the greatest whiskey in the world, that gave us pride because we knew that this was our grandfather's recipe. So that means a lot to us.

 

Jerome: I think that's probably one of the saddest parts of it because there was a genuine relationship. When Jack lost his mother, he left home in search of something that he was missing and he found a family in Dan Call and Nearest Green. It's a very wonderful story. And this company, from the very beginning, is built on the foundation of family and it still continues to this day. It's very common to work with brothers and sisters and just like us. I've recently been blessed to have been working with three brothers and one of the brothers, their son works with us, and a few months back, his granddaughter has actually start working with her uncles, her dad, and our granddad. That's great. It's wonderful.

 

Debbie: That's one thing at Jack Daniel's they've always prided themselves in was family. We are really, really growing. There's still a lot of families there, but back in the day, it was truly all family members.

 

Lucas: It's that combination of biological family, and then, again, you talk about Jack having to leave home and find what he needed as a very young child – and let's not kid ourselves, he was a child – having to find that in a different, maybe, chosen family, which included a lot of different kinds of people in the midst of it. And that still seems to be the case today in Lynchburg and you guys working here, not only working among your own kinfolk, but also your chosen family of the people that you work with on a day-to-day basis. That idea of chosen family also continues to echo throughout all of this story as well, I think.

 

Jackie: Yeah, because you would, if you let your mind go there, if you think back in the 1800's and 1900's, how this young boy could choose to get a relationship with this older, well, he wasn't that old at the time, but with a black man. Apparently, Jack thought the world of him, and I'm sure as he did Jack, so that in itself is unimaginable.

 

Lucas: And that relationship seems to have carried on into multiple generations, obviously, with George, I believe was the son of Nathan?

 

Debbie: He was the oldest.

 

Lucas: He was the oldest, okay. Recently, a barrel house, Barrel House 114, here on the grounds, was renamed in his honor. What was the story behind him kind of being chosen to represent the family, at least for this particular project? Where'd that come about?

 

Jerome: Well, I'll just tell what our grandmother told us. When her grandfather, Nearest Green, was making whiskey, he would make the whiskey and George and Jack, they might head out towards Huntsville with a load of whiskey. George always traveled with Jack and while he was traveling, Nearest, and my grandmother's father, he's the second oldest, he would help him make whiskey. When they got back in town, they would have some more whiskey made and they'd head out in the other direction, so that's the relationship between George and Jack. He was the guy that was with a young Jack on the road. That's their bond and their relationship.

 

Lucas: Now is he the one in the photograph? So that's George that's in that one, okay. Going back and forth and reading a lot of the stuff that's coming out of there, they weren't quite sure who that was for a while. So what was that day like? Gathering the family members and other chosen family members to then have that unveiling over there on what was Barrel House 114?

 

Jackie: It was an awesome day.

 

Debbie: We had so much fun. That was such an honor for our whole family. And we had family members from Indiana, Kentucky, St. Louis, just everywhere. Nashville, everywhere. Lynchburg.

 

Jackie: I think the biggest thing was that was the first time we all had actually been together since this pandemic. My grandmother's children and a cousin, when she first got there, come up and she said, "We can actually hug." She said, "I am hugging my family cause we haven't seen y'all!"

 

Lucas: In the telling of the story, as it continues to unfold and be retold, what has the company gotten right in telling Nearest's story, or what's an aspect of it that just kind of delights you and goes, "That's the core of what we had been told growing up?"

 

Debbie: I don't know, when they let us speak and we can speak from our heart. I'm a big cry baby, so if I start – When we speak from our heart and we speak about our family, that to me, has been the most important thing because we can tell our story and we're going to tell it the way we were told, not what been scripted. That, to me, is really important because I know that would mean a lot to my grandmother.

 

Lucas: So what are you now telling your own offspring about that relationship, the man, the family and its intersection with this company, with the distillery? What things have you told your children and grandchildren now as that family relationship has been even more celebrated?

 

Jackie: Now, we're just trying to tell them everything. Don't leave anything out, so that they know that it can't be disputed. That they can keep it going and say, no, this is not right. This is what my mother said, what her mother said, what her mother said. We can't let it disappear anymore.

 

Lucas: You all have been around here decades, in a good way. What are each of your individual, favorite places on the grounds? Jerome, you probably are moving around to the physical plant a lot more, but do you have like favorite places you like to go or see, or you're looking forward to getting a chance to just hang out at every once in a while?

 

Jerome: When I go to the saw mill and they're burning the charcoal, people don't think about what I think about when I go there. That that process, right there, is because my ancestor was an enslaved man. He wasn't allowed to drink the best that was made. As a slave, you were given the scraps and you wasn't given the best. He had to make the best of what was given to him. So, the whiskey that the slaves could drink wasn't the best. It was the stuff that was bitter. He had to take charcoal and filter it so it could be drinkable for them. So, when I go there, it touches me and as anybody that comes from their ancestors were being enslaved, it touches me because I knew that something that's being sold now, all around the world, and it's number one in the world on top of that, it's because he took something that wasn't the best and made it the best and that will always be a legacy that can't be taken away from him or anybody that makes Tennessee whiskey. They can't make Tennessee whiskey without –

 

Lucas: Without having that be a part of the process.

 

Jerome: Yes, yes.

 

Debbie: And it started from him.

 

Lucas: That's the definition of Tennessee whiskey is the process that he –

 

Debbie: The Lincoln County process.

 

Lucas: The Lincoln County process that he perfected. Let's call it that. I always go back. I'm always fascinated about the origin points of things. How many other different kinds of filtering processes, perhaps, did he try over the years before landing on that that really, really worked? How many failed experiments were there? Just trying stuff with what was available in the area?

 

Debbie: So I was told that he made whiskey for other people, but he only made that process for Jack.

 

Lucas: For Jack's still. Interesting.

 

Jackie: And I love the cave. As a kid that's what we did. We'd walk up here and we walked to the cave. And when I go up there, I always think about us playing in that cave. We never got in the cave, but there's rocks and we sat on the rocks and we played in the cave.

 

Lucas: That's very cool. Jackie, what about you?

 

Jackie: I guess, bottling right where I'm at. The finished product, when everything has been done and we know it's 100. It's the best of the best going out the door.

 

Lucas: What kind of things have you seen across the course of 26 years, what have you seen improve in that? Have you worked in bottling for most of that time? What are the improvements that have been made over the years, as far as technology and machinery and process, what's kind of impressed you in that quarter of a century that you've been doing that kind of process?

 

Jackie: Probably from the beginning to now, it would be the speeds of the line, how much that we are getting out the machinery to where we can get it out.

 

Lucas: How much would you say, two times, three times, 10 times, has that improved over your course of doing it? I know that, probably, with each of those incremental improvements happened, you go, "Oh man, this is faster than I can deal with." And then you just get used to it. And that's what the speed is moving forward.

 

Jackie: Well, actually we never even realized, cause we were doing the same things, that it was getting faster.

 

Debbie: Oh, I did! Because the department we work in now, I worked back there when we did everything manually. So we work an empty glass and it's put on a conveyor. And we had to put each case on by hand and it kept getting faster and you dumped the miniatures by hand. Now we sit and we watch them go down. That is a blessing.

 

Jackie: But it's like you looked up and there was more people in the bottling.

 

Debbie: They kept adding more machinery.

 

Jackie: If we was cartoning, there was more people on the line.

 

Debbie: Then the break room was overflowed. So they built us a brand new building, so now everything is nice and spacious.

 

Lucas: Little more elbow room. So each of you were featured, in some fashion, in the the recent documentary "Chasing Whiskey." Jackie, you and Debbie, showing you guys riding in together of the day.

 

Debbie: We still doing it.

 

Lucas: Still doing it, okay. Still living next door to each other?

 

Jackie: No, not next door.

 

Debbie: But my mother lives next door. Her house is next door.

 

Lucas: So cutting down on the commute by doing that. There's a great scene in that film of you guys being on the former Call property, just fishing there. Is that someplace that you visit, or visited, frequently or is that just kind of movie magic in the midst of all of that?

 

Debbie: Movie magic. But we had been down there and that was kind of moving to know. We went to a slave ground cemetery, not sure where Nearest is buried. But when you stood up high, and we saw where the old spring water – and I don't know if that's what drew me to, as a kid, to the spring caves because of the spring water – we saw that. The road that Jack and George that they traveled by horse and buggy.

 

Lucas: Probably pretty much cut that road through there as well.

 

Debbie: It was beautiful. So that was the first time or second time we had been down there a couple of times.

 

Jackie: When we first went there and when we got to the slave quarters where he lived at and we could see the trail and that's when our grandmother's stories –

 

Debbie: It all made sense.

 

Jackie: – what she had been telling us. It was like we could see it.

 

Debbie: I could just picture George. I don't know if it was – did Eli go with them?

 

Jackie: She would always say the boys would go with them and I guess they may have took turns, I don't know.

 

Jerome: Right. All I know is that the boys went and, now knowing that the oldest was George, he was the one that went with him and her father stayed and helped Nearest. I haven't spent that much time at the farm and it was surreal. You've heard stories and it's like it's a picture. It's like you can really see it.

 

Lucas: You get told those stories so much over time that you've got that picture in your head and then, hopefully, when you do see it, it does go, "Oh yeah, that's what my mind's eye pictured in the midst of all that."

 

Debbie: I tried to imagine them making whiskey. I can imagine them, him, from the big house to where the still was. It wasn't just a little bootleg, like you see in the movies. Cause that's what I thought in my mind. I'm looking at TV and I'm thinking, after I thought about it and I'm older and I'm thinking, okay, they had some kind of little distill set up. No, it was a nice setup. And you can imagine, I don't think a movie or a story can explain the feeling that that is.

 

Lucas: What you're telling me is there are probably better fishing spots around here? I'm getting nods, for those of you who are listening at home. It was a nice picturesque view of that, but also I sense that maybe the fishing wasn't as good as perhaps they were going to try to lead people to believe. That's fine. What are your favorite ways of enjoying the product that you've been working with for so long? Do you have favorite expressions that you choose to consume on your off times or family cocktail recipes or something? Or is it just a neat on top of ice?

 

Debbie: No, but I remember my auntie would say, she said, "Up to my lips and down to my toes, where many quarts and gallon goes!" She would say that as a cheer all the time.

 

Lucas: Nice. Have you carried that tradition forward?

 

Debbie: Well, I have and then my daughter would look at me like, "What?"

 

Lucas: What about you two? Are you No. 7 fans? Gentleman Jack fans? What's your favorite way to enjoy?

 

Jerome: Well, I've been blessed. My favorite way is right out of the barrel.

 

Lucas: That's true. You have a little better, up close and personal view of that stuff.

 

Debbie: But your favorite drink of Jack?

 

Jerome: Straight out of the barrel.

 

Debbie: The descendant bottle was really, really, really good.

 

Lucas: Now did each of you have a role in kind of picking the specific barrel?

 

Debbie: He did. We did a sampling of different barrels and different warehouses. We had to narrow it down and we let Romey, cause he's the warehouse's specialist. We let him – he knew where to go to get the good stuff, the Green stuff.

 

Lucas: Nice! Do you remember which barrel house it was in, and you can just nod, you don't have to tell me, cause people are going to want to go find the Green stuff from there as well.

 

Jackie: They're not getting up there!

 

Lucas: Well, again, Debbie, Jerome, Jackie, thank you for spending a little time with us. We appreciate everything you've done to help amplify the story in such a good way and a positive way for us moving forward. But thanks for spending some time with us around the barrel.

 

Debbie: Oh, you're welcome.

 

Jerome: Thank you.

 

Jackie: Thanks for having us.

 

Lucas: Thanks for checking out this episode of Around the Barrel. For more on the unearthing of the uncommon friendship between Jack Daniel and Nearest Green, check out episode five of season three with author and entrepreneur Fawn Weaver. And if you want to know more about the Nearest and Jack Advancement Initiative Partnership, head over to episode 12 of season three and our conversation with distillery vice president and assistant GM, Melvin Keebler.

 

You can find archived episodes of Around the Barrel on all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and more, plus on the web at jackdaniels.com/podcast. And if you like what you hear, please follow, rate, and review while you're at it. Cheers y'all and 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 No. 7 are registered trademarks, copyright 2021, Jack Daniel's. Tennessee whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof, distilled and bottle by Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around the Barrel is intended for listeners 21 years of age and older.