By George Fels
[Reprinted from September 2004]
The most colorful thing about the late Billy Joe “Cornbread Red” Burge, at least to me, was that nickname. True, I did know people who thought he was a laugh riot, but the fact was, if you weren’t part of his circle, he had hardly any personality at all. In the late ’60s, he appeared on the TV show called “Minnesota Fats Hustles the Pros.” After he whomped the stuffing out of the show’s star, Rudolph Wanderone, in all three forms of pool played, emcee “Whispering Joe” Wilson naively attempted an interview. “Yeah, tough match,” was as insightful as Red would get during those tortuous few minutes, and he barely got his jaws apart for that. “Mmmmmm,” murmured my wife, who could be one highfalutin’ snob when the mood suited her, “Articulate!”

And for pool outsiders in general, that moniker was the one thing about him they could remember. Moreover, it was the only such nickname they did remember. If Burge did indeed have some kind of Jones for cornbread, it sprang from his myth: no one can be found who ever saw him tear into any. But in his era, almost every pool player of note claimed a nickname, and not the contrived nicknames that exist among today’s players. Some were inspired by occupation (“Pots and Pans” Rogoff, “Meatman” Balsis) in those rare scenarios where players were employed; some by physical traits (“Handsome” Danny Jones, who really wasn’t); and some by habits (“Wimpy” Lassiter). Cornbread’s, on the other hand, was the only one that rhymed, and unlike the other Red from Jersey, his hair was legitimately red, at least as a young man.

If you followed Red’s doings on a daily basis, I gather he could be pretty entertaining, especially if you were betting on him. He was one tough little mutt, having survived both throat cancer and open-heart surgery, and it naturally followed that there wasn’t much on a pool or snooker table that fazed him in the slightest. He was primarily a 9-ball and one-pocket hustler, but forayed into the first few hustlers’ jamborees in Johnston City, Ill., in the early to mid ’60s. His tournament play was indifferent, and it was there that Wanderone beat him somehow in after-hours play, and uttered the to-become-memorable line, “Now he’s just plain No-Bread Red.”

In general, however, Red booked very few losers. Unlike most of his hustling peers, he had no leaks: for the money he won. He drank, but was not into other addictive drugs, and no form of gambling other than pool interested him much. He was married; he had a gorgeous daughter who, through the wonders of genetics, looked nothing whatsoever like him; and the money he won went to his wife and daughter without exception. Red didn’t even particularly need road trips; he did just fine at the Rack & Cue, the fabled money room just outside Detroit, where an FBI raid one weeknight netted $250,000 in cash. Virtually every money player in the country showed up at the Rack at one time or another. If they were foolish enough to take Red on — especially in anything played on a snooker table — they mostly came in second.

I only saw him play once, from just a single table away, and would not find out who he was until much later. This was at the old Bensinger’s room in downtown Chicago, in one of its last respectable years. I made a game — 50 points for $20 — with a guy I knew and had gambled with before. I had a $.02 bankroll, but he didn’t make me put the money up.

I wouldn’t have made that game if one of Bensigner’s very few 9-foot pool tables hadn’t been open. Red was on the next such table, playing $5 9-ball. At that point, I had been around pool for not quite six years, had a long run of not quite three racks, and was dumb enough that I could probably still have been hustled. But something about the redhead in the truck driver overalls (navy blue) on the next table still didn’t add up. If he was enough of a rube to shoot off an open thumb, as he was, then how come he confidently gunned the 9 ball so hard it seemed like he was trying to tear the pocket off the rail?

As for my match, I utilized an open-thumb bridge too, not because I was hustling but to disguise my quaking like Katherine Hepburn on a very bad day. The game was close, and quite poorly played from both ends. Finally I got a warm smile from Dame Providence: My opponent got out of line sufficiently that his 49th point required him to re-break the balls from a less-than-optimal angle. Sure enough, he buried the cue ball in the swamp, called some near-hopeless combination shot, and missed it. With the table wide open, I managed to poke in the five or six balls I needed. I think predictably drilled the guy in a second game. Showing considerably more candor than I had, he implored me to indulge in some $2 9-ball for his last $8, which I also won in the minimal number of racks.

Flushed with victory and a restored bankroll of $48.02, I watched Red continue his carnage. And at one point, he made eye contact. While we had absolutely nothing in common except pool, I swear that we each had the identical thought: “You’re on the grift too, aren’t you, you sly bastard?”

That moment alone is reason enough for me to miss him.