Customer Reviews

Cornbread Red: Pool's Greatest Money Player

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Cornbread Red" is the biography of Billy Joe Burge, one of America's best known pool gamblers. It isn't always a glamorous story, and much of Red's life couldn't be considered wholesome, but he undeniably earned his place in the history of pool.

Henning traces Burge's life from the small Kentucky town in which he started playing pool, to a few road trips in which he honed his game, to his tenure as carnival worker in which learned to read and "work" people, and on to one of the hottest gambling spots in the US. Whether it was in a small pool room behind a barber shop, or under the lights of Las Vegas, Red was there giving people a run for their money.

Although Red knew how to control the table, the heat of the gamble or the looseness of the gamblers' fraternity sometimes got the better of him. At a few points in the book, I cringed as Red allowed tens of thousands of dollars in recent winnings slip between his fingers. But Red's world isn't the one we live in, where such a loss would put us on the streets; Red had a talent for setting up matches and a support network that kept him on his feet. As Henning makes clear, these talents aren't to be underestimated. Red made his living and distinguished himself in a world that most of us have neither the skill nor the guts to enter.

This book could've easily been written as a condemnation of gambling. Red made some bad decisions along the way, as would anybody who lived in a world where people bet thousands of dollars on anything from one-handed pool games to cigarette tossing contests. Henning chooses, however, to focus on the grit that typified Red's experience. In fact, honest grit is what this book is about. It doesn't have the excitement, panache, and detail of "Playing Off the Rail" or "Willie's Game," but it paints a vivid picture of the everyday money player's experience.

In 1974 I meet Cornbread Red in a bar in Kannapolis, NC. I had the table when he came in the package store, he looked a little disheveled but most everyone in the room knew who he was but I had never heard of "Cornbread Red". He had just got through with some heavy money matches in Charlotte and was just trying to unwind with some beer and pool before calling it a day/night. I got 1 shot during our game; I broke and ran 7 balls off the table, before he shot. He ran the table out.
This book gave me a good insight on this man's life and was a very enjoyable read. If you have every played pool in a pool hall or bar room you can related to this man's life. He used simple tools to make himself into a legend.

This book is an easy read, but a difficult review. If you want to read about Cornbread Red's association with unknown gamblers playing for huge (unnamed, split-seven-ways) stakes, this is the book for you. If you want anecdotes about other greats he encountered, forget it. Danny Jones and Fats get brief mentions. The rest is mostly about Rubie, Bones, Al, and a host of other household names. Not really a bad book, but it could have been much better.

Take a journey into a different time with this mini-biography of sorts about the famous pool hustler. A very entertaining read, this book gives the reader perspective on how things were 15-65 years ago while telling this great hustler's life story. It covers how he got started in the game as a boy and continues up through and beyond married life. Both the highs and lows of this pool hustler's life are told in an intersting way.

This book is a good pool story that's well written by a pool player for pool players. Reading stories like this makes me want to be a better pool player. It certainly provides a some motivation to go practice.

After reading Robert Byrne's McGoorty I could barely read this book. If you're a casual pool player then this book is for you. But anyone who has played pool on a serious level will tell you that the stories in this book are so incredibly far-fetched and unbelievable that they are almost impossible (and by serious I mean played on the road or has followed professional or underground pool very closely for sometime, NOT "I play APA" serious). You can tell by the title that the author is blowin' smoke up everyone's arse. "Pool's Greatest Money Player"? That's a bold statement sir. But he doesn't become modest at all throughout the book, he literally carries on this "I'm the greatest" attitude in all of his chapters. It's obnoxious and very obviously untrue.

I think we all have that one friend, you know, the one that tells you new stories every month that are so over the top and exaggerated that the friend has lost all credibility when he speaks and you begin to wonder if he/she is just a compulsive liar...that's Cornbread Red. If you want a book full of those stories, then this is the book for you.

Great book showing the seedy past of billiards and one of it's more colorful personalities.

anxiously awaited book, it came in good time. only thing was the cover was very scratched. enjoyed the speed of delivery but thought the book would be in beter shape.