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[Upbeat Bluegrass] Dan: I'm Dan Pierce, I'm chair of the history department here at UNC Asheville,
and professor of history,
and I have a new book coming out, titled Corn from a Jar: Moonshining
in the Great Smoky Mountains.
There's really not another book that really kind of covers the whole,
kind of, evolution of the moonshine business from
a craft
that was practiced by lots of people, you know, akin
to making
linsey-woolsey
clothing or pottery or anything like that,
to becoming an industrial enterprise. When I started doing the research on
NASCAR of course there are a lot of books that talk about the drivers,
you know, being hauling liquor one day and then the next day taking the same
car to the racetrack and winning the race.
What I found was that the connections were even stronger than people
had talked about and it wasn't just drivers, it was practically everyone
in the whole—
the track owners, the promoters,
the car owners, you know, it just really permeated the whole thing.
That really got me
by necessity
looking into the whole moonshine business. You know, there are some people that say,
"Well,
moonshining died, you know,when Popcorn committed suicide in his
six gallon
Ford Fairlane,"
but I think it was really, he was really the beginning of a major resurgence
that's occurred.
For those that don't get the title,
it's from a line from
the song Rocky Top
and so
the line is, "Corn won't grow at all on Rocky Top, soil's too rocky
by far, that's why all the folks on Rocky Top
get their corn from a jar."