At the time when Bullock was working as a bartender, there were not really professional standards or standard cocktail recipes, and even cocktail books looked a little different than we know them today. The book, The Ideal Bartender, was THE bartender’s manual for a long time in the bartending community.

“He was the first Black man to write a cocktail book and he wrote and published it in 1917,” Harrison explains. “That was one of the things that got Andy and I going on trying to put together this show. There were other folks not too long after that who were putting out some cocktail books. A lot of the cocktail books actually at the time weren’t cocktail books per se, and a lot of them were from African Americans, and the cocktails were part of cookbooks.”

While today it might seem obvious to have cocktails and food recipes alongside each other, the reasoning behind it during Bullock’s time had more to do with respectability politics. “There were a lot of cookbooks that highlighted African American cooking, and part of that was the cocktails or alcoholic drinks,” Harrison says. “One of the reasons that they didn’t talk a lot about drinking is because at the time, one of the things that was supposed to be not a good situation is that African Americans were, well, we were portrayed as being lazy and drinking a lot, which really wasn’t the case, but that’s how we were portrayed. Many folks in their cookbooks didn’t want to talk a lot about cocktails and drinks because they didn’t want to reinforce that already negative stereotype that was out there.”

Bullock’s book was unique in that it was only about cocktails, which could have easily been because he expected that only other bartenders would have an interest in his book at the time. “There are about 170 recipes in his book, which is a lot when you think about it,” Harrison continues. “The interesting thing about that is that all of those recipes are his. He didn’t go around cribbing recipes from other people and putting them into his own cocktail book. I found that to be kind of remarkable. There’s not a lot about specific technique; it’s really about the recipes themselves. Within a recipe, he might talk about how to do something, you know, this is how you should slice something. But there’s not a huge amount of technique that he talks about in there.”

Harrison found additional information about Tom Bullock in another book that his wife gifted to him, Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice: A Cocktail Recipe Book by Toni Tipton-Martin. Each section of that book details the historical context of how and why things were being done the way they were at the time, which gave Harrison some additional direction for how to portray the character he modeled after Tom Bullock.

As Harrison discovers more information about Bullock or the historical context in which he lived, he tries to incorporate that into his Ideal Bartender program at the Evan Williams Experience. “I talk a little bit about working on the Pullman cars as a porter and how those were good jobs for African Americans,” Harrison explains. “They actually did fairly well in terms of what they were paid. A lot of the folks who were doing that, they were working hard, making some decent money, and most of it was going home to their families.”

Because working-class African American history was not always documented as meticulously as white owner-class history, a lot of Tom Bullock’s life is unknown, and Harrison fills in the blanks with general history of the time period. He’s always adding historical context to his show and the character he has created for it.

“One of the reasons I dress in the costume I wear — I have a red vest and a red bow tie, a nice, cuffed shirt with nice cufflinks in them, and a white apron — I wear that because people really connect with it,” Harrison says. “Interestingly, when I do a show that has African Americans at the bar who are part of the group, virtually all the time when I get done, I ask people for questions, and they all want to talk to me about Tom Bullock. And I’ve had, I think it’s probably twice in the three years of doing the show, where I had a gentleman come up to me after the show and he said, ‘I was really happy to hear you talk about working on the Pullman cars.’ He said, ‘My grandfather did that.’”

Even though Tom Bullock’s name is well known in Louisville and among bartenders, neither of the places he tended bar in his lifetime, the Pendennis Club and the St Louis Country Club, had any information about his time working there, Harrison says. But he has managed to pull together a compelling cocktail experience at the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience, hosted in the speakeasy each week on Thursday and Friday at 11:45am, 1:45pm, and 3:45 pm.

During the show, Harrison talks about Bullock’s life and makes the Old Fashioned cocktail from Bullock’s book, often rumored to be the original Old Fashioned cocktail invented at the Pendennis Club in Louisville. The cocktail is followed by a guided tasting of Heaven Hill whiskeys and further discussion about Bullock. The program has proven to be extremely popular, and often sells out weeks in advance. It seems that whiskey enthusiasts always want to know more about Tom Bullock.

“He was strong and smart and well read, which is how he did what he did in writing a cocktail book,” Harrison says. “That’s the biggest thing. That’s why we even remember him to this day, because of his cocktail book and having such an impact on a lot of different people. I mean, I love the fact that GH Walker wrote the introduction for Bullock’s book. And GH Walker is the grandfather and great-grandfather of George HW Bush and George W Bush. The introduction he wrote is glowing. Bullock was a person who had that kind of impact on people. That, to me, is remarkable.”  

Tom Bullock’s Old Fashioned

Ingredients

• 1 lump of ice
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters
• 1 lump of sugar and dissolve in water
• 1.5 jiggers of bourbon whiskey

Method

Twist a piece of lemon skin over the drink and drop it in. Stir well and serve.

Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond Boulevardier

Ingredients

• 1.25oz Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond

• 1oz Campari

• 0.75oz sweet vermouth

• Orange swath

Method

Combine ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and stir until chilled. Strain into a rocks glass over a large ice cube. Garnish with orange swath.

Elijah Craig Old Fashioned

Ingredients

• 2oz Elijah Craig Small Batch

• 0.25oz simple syrup

• 3 dashes bitters

• Orange swath

• Brandied cherry (optional)

Method

In a mixing glass, add bitters, simple syrup, Elijah Craig Small Batch, and ice. Stir until well chilled. Strain the cocktail over a large ice cube in a double Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with a brandied cherry and swath of orange.

Larceny Paper Plane

Ingredients

• 0.75oz Larceny Bourbon

• 0.75oz Aperol

• 0.75oz Amaro Nonino Quintessentia

• 0.75oz fresh lemon juice

Method

Combine all ingredients in a shaker. Add ice and shake until well chilled. Strain the cocktail into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a paper plane (optional).