The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History Read Free Page A

for one show, which paid for a pre-Monterey Pop performance of Redding's "Respect" and his cover of"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction,"with the horn section playing the Keith Richards guitar line.

    Then Hyleme George made a business decision that changed the history of Lebanon and Kentucky-and of rock 'n' roll. In 1964, he opened Club 68, a nightclub named for the highway that ran through Main Street, a highway that would carry hundreds of cars bringing thousands of people-mostly wide-eyed teenagers-to Lebanon every weekend from a hundred miles away or more, young white kids who were drawn by the black musicians who had been playing to black folks on Water Street for more than a decade by then. Club 68 united, for the first time in those parts, black musicians with white audiences, brought together by a Lebanese immigrant in Lebanon, Kentucky. This strange brew, combined with lax enforcement of underage drinking laws, quickly catapulted Lebanon into a primary nightlife destination for young people across Kentucky and beyond, prompting the Courier ,journal to refer to Lebanon during an investigation of its club scene as "the Ft. Lauderdale of central Kentucky."
    Of all the performers who passed through Hyleme's clubs, none of them-not even Jimi Hendrix-left a greater impression on audiences than Ike and Tina Turner, who played the Cherry and Club 68 between a dozen and twenty times, depending on whom one asks. The memories of these shows-from locals, out-of-town college boys and the gonzo disc jockeys from WAKY-AM, who could hardly believe what passed for normal in Lebanon-illuminate a page ripped from popular music history, with Hyleme George grilling steaks for the band as the bus arrived, Ike Turner firing his drummer for being ten minutes late and Tina shimmering on stage.
    At some point in 1977 after Ike and Tina's final appearance in Lebanon, local legend claims that Hyleme George received a phone call from Tina Turner. She had just broken up with Ike, and if Hyleme could send her $5,000, she knew that she could make it on her own. Decades later, when Tina Turner performed in Louisville's Freedom Hall during a world tour, Obie Slater managed to get backstage to see if Tina remembered him, but she disappointed him.
    "I think I might remember," she told Slater. "But I don't know."
    What we do know is that this relationship between Hyleme George and the Turners began in 1961, when the jukebox man loaded a single into the Club Cherry jukebox that caught Obie Slater's ear-Ike and Tina's second hit record, "It's Gonna Work Out Fine."

    Of course, Ike and Tina's relationship did not work out fine. Neither did the wild notion taken by many Marion County boys who drank and danced and fist-fought to this soundtrack that they could make a living by breaking the law, growing plants considered by the government to be a threat to society.
    In the belly of Club 68-listening to the likes of Ike and Tinathose who became the Cornbread 70 received their education in life skills, where laws weren't so much broken as simply ignored, the outside world and its consequences held at bay by a multigenerational code of silence and a soundtrack of rock 'n' roll and rhythm and blues, where otherwise good Catholic boys learned to run from the law. The 1971 yearbook from Marion County High School contains numerous photos of young men who would be included among the Cornbread 70. Take, for instance, Jimmy Bickett.
    Elected class clown in 1971, Jimmy Bickett spent his weekends in high school dealing cards at the endless game of seven-card stud run out of the Blue Room in the back of Club 68. When Hyleme George played, he always sat next to the dealer, and as soon as the other players were drunk or distracted, Hyleme would nudge Bickett under the table, and Bickett would rake the pot twice in the same hand. From watching the game played this way, Jimmy Bickett learned that even when he lost, Hyleme George found a way to win.
    By the time Bickett graduated