![]() Radio reporter Ray Snader on "Popcorn" Sutton, 2009. He was a friendly fellow, and of course every time you would talk to him, he would say, "Ray, I've run my last run of moonshine, I'm not gonna do it anymore, I'm just getting too old to be doing this stuff." Even when he came to federal court, he was wearing bib overalls. ![]() And his bib overalls – he always wore bib overalls. He was a short, skinny fella, who always wore his hat – that was kind of his claim to fame, his hat that he always wore. ) At around the same time, Sutton produced a home video of the same title and released it on VHS tape. (A woman named Ernestine Upchurch, with whom Sutton had been living in the 1990s, later said she helped write the book. The New York Times later called it "a rambling, obscene, and often hilarious account of his life in the trade". Sutton then wrote a self-published autobiography and guide to moonshine production called Me and My Likker, and began selling copies of it in 1999 out of his junk shop in Maggie Valley. In 1998 his roadside store in Maggie Valley, NC was searched by state agents, who seized a moonshine still and sixty gallons of moonshine, and Sutton was again placed on probation with a suspended sentence. He was convicted in 1974 of selling untaxed liquor and in 19 on charges of possessing controlled substances and assault with a deadly weapon, but received only probation sentences until the 1985 arrest, after which he served time in the Craggy Correctional Center in Asheville. Before his rise to fame at around 60 years of age, he had been in trouble with the law several times, but had avoided prison sentences. In the 1960s or 1970s, Sutton was given the nickname of "Popcorn" after his frustrated attack on a bar's faulty popcorn vending machine with a pool cue. Sutton said he considered moonshine production a legitimate part of his heritage, as he was a Scots-Irish American and descended from a long line of moonshiners. ![]() Sutton had a long career making moonshine and bootlegging. Since his death, a new company and associated whiskey brand have been named after him. Sutton died by suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in March 2009, aged 62, rather than report to federal prison Īfter being convicted of offenses related to moonshining and illegal firearm possession. He wrote a self-published autobiographical guide to moonshining production, self-produced a home video depicting his moonshining activities, was the subject of several documentaries, including one that received a Regional Emmy Award, and is the subject of the award-winning biography and photobook The Moonshiner Popcorn Sutton. Born in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, he grew up, lived and died in the rural areas around Maggie Valley and nearby Cocke County, Tennessee. Marvin " Popcorn" Sutton (October 5, 1946 – March 16, 2009) was an American Appalachian moonshiner and bootlegger.
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