Thank you to Jeremy P. for forwarding this link: ‘Popcorn’ Sutton dies.

Legendary Haywood County moonshiner Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton took his own life because he couldn’t stand the thought of going to prison, his wife said today.

Pam Sutton said she found her husband Monday afternoon dead of carbon monoxide poisoning outside their home in Cocke County, Tenn.

“He got his letter to report Friday, and he just couldn’t handle it,” she said. “We tried everything we could to leave him on house arrest, and they wouldn’t do it. So I thank the federal court for this.

“And he was really sick. He was depressed. I didn’t know he was that depressed.”

Sutton, 62, spent much of his life making moonshine, a craft that brought him fame and a string of criminal convictions dating back to the 1970s. He was facing 18 months in federal prison on moonshining and weapons charges and had told a judge at his sentencing he was in poor health and would rather die at home than in jail.

[...]

Nearly 1,500 people had signed petitions asking for leniency in his sentence.

Born near Maggie Valley, N.C., Sutton was revered by some for preserving a dying piece of mountain history.

That is indeed a sad story.

From Bob Dylan’s song Moonshiner:

I’ve been a moonshiner,
For seventeen long years,
I’ve spent all my money,
On whiskey and beer,
I go to some hollow,
And sit at my still
And if whiskey dont kill me,
Then I dont know what will

Bob Dylan’s Moonshiner is a poignant variation on what seems to be a traditional song. It’s available on the original Bootleg Series, of-course, and on Live at the Gaslight 1962.

It’s far from the only reference in Dylan’s body of work to illicitly-made whiskey. One of the standout tracks on Self Portrait is Dylan’s genuinely lovely rendition of a song credited to A.F. Beddoe called Copper Kettle.

My daddy he made whiskey, my granddaddy he did too
We ain’t paid no whiskey tax since 1792
You’ll just lay there by the juniper while the moon is bright
Watch them just a-filling in the pale moonlight.

I think you could theorize that the images of moonshine and bootlegged whiskey in Dylan’s body of work are ones that he uses to evoke freedom, rebelliousness, self-reliance, a little anarchy, and other good old American values like that. And long, please God, may they survive.

Thanks again to Jeremy for forwarding this and making the link to Bob’s song (and he’s also part of a Facebook group called “Dylan a Day”, for sharing lyrics that resonate).

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