Foreword: As in the past when in doing research on a “whiskey man,” I come across an existing article that tells his story as well or better than I could, I seek permission to reprint it on this website. So it is with an article on a celebrated black bartender named Tom Bullock. Researched and written by Michael Jones for the Louisville Tourist Bureau and entitled “The Life and Legacy of Tom Bullock,” it is a good narrative of the black bartender’s life. With slight editing Author Jones’ article follows:
The best way for a modern cocktail enthusiast to appreciate Bullock and his career is to consider them in the context of the time in which he lived. Bullock was born in Louisville, Kentucky in October 18, 1872, less than a decade after the Civil War. His father, also named Thomas Bullock, was a former slave who fought for the Union Army and worked as a furniture mover after the war. The 1880 Census shows the older Bullock living with his wife, Jennie, and their three children – Tom, 7; Lena, 6; and Clarence, 1.
Louisville was a Union stronghold during the war, but the city became a magnet for ex-Confederates after the fighting ceased. The Louisville & Nashville Railroad controlled the only working tracks to the Deep South, so the River City became a major center of trade. By 1870, the city’s population had increased more than 48 percent to 100,000 people. The former rebels soon took over Louisville’s culture. Historian George C. Wright wrote, “It seems that a part of the ‘rite of passage’ into the business world of the city was to have been an officer of the Confederacy. Nearly all of Louisville’s journalists, lawyers, realtors, and merchants were former rebels.”
One of the Southern traditions that blossomed in Louisville after the Civil War was the use of African American bartenders….”In the North, black bartenders were seen as competition and shut out entirely. In Southern-leaning cities like Louisville and St. Louis, the situation was different. They had a history of using African Americans in all types of serving positions,” said cocktail historian David Wondrich,
Bullock learned his bartending skills at the Pendennis Club, Louisville’s elite private club, where he started out working as a bellboy. The Pendennis Club was founded in 1881. The club did not move to its current home at Second and Muhammad Ali until 1928. When Bullock worked there, it was located in a downtown mansion formerly owned by William Burke Belknap, founder of the Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company. President Chester A. Arthur dined there in 1883 when he came to Louisville for the Southern Exposition.
There is a curious news item in the February 26, 1904, Courier-Journal that might explain why Bullock left the Pendennis Club. The headline read, “Pendennis Club Sued.” The story relates that “Clarence Bullock, a Negro waiter, sued the club for $5,000 damages” after his knee was cut by glass while opening a bottle of club soda for a club member. For whatever reason, Bullock left the Pendennis Club to work at a competing private club, the Kenton Club; a short-lived rival started in 1885 by businessmen denied membership to the Pendennis.
Bullock left Louisville to work in a railroad car bar. For a while he was living in Cincinnati with his brother Clarence and working on the rails. According to the introduction to his book, he also spent some time working in Chicago. But eventually he settled in St. Louis, where he lived with his widowed mother and tended bar at the exclusive St. Louis Country Club.
The St. Louis Country Club has a golf course designed by Charles B. Macdonald, who is considered the father of American golf. Among Bullock’s regular patrons was George Herbert "Bert" Walker Sr., an American banker and businessman. He was the maternal grandfather of President George H. W. Bush and a great-grandfather of President George W. Bush, both of whom were named in his honor. Walker, who besides siring presidents… was president of the U.S. Golf Association. The Walker Cup, a competition between American and British golfers, is named for him. In his introduction to “The Ideal Bartender” Walker wrote of Bullock, “For the past quarter of a century he has refreshed and delighted the members and their friends of the Pendennis Club of Louisville and the St. Louis Country Club of St. Louis. In all of that time, I doubt if he has erred in even one of his concoctions.”
“The Ideal Bartender” itself was born out of controversy. During the 1912 election there were persistent rumors that Theodore Roosevelt was a secret drunk. After hearing a Roosevelt speech in Marquette, Iron Ore editor George Newitt penned an article that declared, “Roosevelt lies, and curses in a most disgusting way, he gets drunk too, and that not infrequently, and all of his intimates know about it.”
Roosevelt sued for libel. During the testimony for the suit the former president conceded that in the years since he had left the White House he drank two Mint Juleps. One occasion was at the St. Louis Country Club, and he claimed to have only taken a couple of sips. This led to a playful editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 28, 1913.
The writer contends that Bullock’s drinks are so good Roosevelt couldn’t be telling the truth: “Who was ever known to drink just a part of Tom’s? Tom, than whom there is no greater mixologist of any race.”…. Regardless of how much of the julep he drank, Roosevelt won his libel suit and all the attention translated to national fame for Bullock. With the help of patrons like Walker and August Busch Sr., CEO of Anheuser-Busch, he was able to publish his recipe book.
[Bullock’s 1917 book, the last to be published before National Prohibition, has been reprinted numerous times because it has long been out of copyright. Various editions are shown through this post.]
Bullock became particularly famous for his Mint Juleps. “The Ideal Bartender” contains two recipes – Kentucky Style and St. Louis Style. The former is the familiar Mint Julep he probably mastered at the Pendennis Club. The other recipe includes gin, lemon and lime juice, and Grenadine, a non-alcoholic bar syrup. In a nod to Busch, “The Ideal Bartender” also includes a drink called Golfer’s Delight that used Bevo, a non-alcoholic beer that Anheuser-Busch developed in anticipation of Prohibition.
Bullock was at the height of his popularity in 1917. Then America did the unthinkable and outlawed alcohol. Missouri was actually one of the last states to adopt Prohibition. It was rejected in the 1910, 1912, and 1918 elections. However in 1919, the Missouri General Assembly accepted prohibition by ratifying the 18th Amendment. Thereafter, Bullock is listed in the St. Louis City Directory as working a laborer or a butler, but most cocktail writers believe he continued to serve alcohol. He remained employed for several years by the St. Louis Country Club but they were not specific about his duties. Bullock mysteriously disappears from the public record after 1927. It is generally accepted that he didn’t die until 1964, but almost nothing is known about the years in between.
“The Ideal Bartender” celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2017, and Bullock seems to be as hot as ever. Planter’s House, a cocktail bar and restaurant in St. Louis, named a Bullock Room in his honor. And in 2013, D’USSÉ Cognac established the Tom Bullock Award for Distinguished Service in Washington, D.C. In 2019, a mural [shown below] dedicated to Tom Bullock was installed on the side of a prominent Louisville restaurant, just down the street from the site of the original Pendennis Club. Artist and Louisville native Kacy Jackson designed the mural which depicts Bullock serving up an Old Fashioned cocktail.
Notes: Through the good offices of Jordan Skora of Louisville Tourism, I have been in indirect touch with the author of this post, Michael Jones. Jordan has provided his response: “Thanks. I’ll take a look at it, but I’m for anything that gets Bullock’s name out there.” And my thanks to you, Michael, for bringing Bullock to the fore.
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