Is Dr.Bradley's Mixture a codger blend?

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Oct 7, 2016
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I got some from Iwan Ries yesterday, smoked a bowl this morning. I am not sure what the qualifications are to be given the now seemingly honorable label of codger blend. Does it qualify?
Nothing offensive in the first bowl, which was less than optimally dry, but I can fix that. Reminded me of the Edwards chain blends, though not any one of them in particular.

 

cally454

Starting to Get Obsessed
Dec 31, 2012
205
0
Not sure if cogers know what Latakia is but I'm sure more learned pipers will chime in.

 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
I've been tempted to get several of those venerable Iwan Ries blends in pouches and try them out. Dr. Bradley sounds good, as do the International blend and several others. Their number one selling Three Star Blue is a tobacco forward aromatic and after sampling two pouches, I gladly bought a 7 oz. tin. Splitting hairs, I wouldn't call Dr. Bradley a codger blend exactly. It has the seniority and the right blood lines, as it were, but having a whole narrative around its origins and being named after a specific individual puts it in a sort of "private blend" class for me. Maybe it's an honorary codger, but it is somewhat more high tone. just my take on it.

 
Oct 7, 2016
2,451
5,195
Guys, I am really trying to ascertain the boundaries of the term.
Given how much of the Midwest Ries was/is a factor in, I am not sure it the analogy to a private label blend holds, though technically it certainly is. Heck, I walked into a shop in downtown Cincinnati one time back in the late 1980's and a whole shelf was devoted to IRC blends. Not sure that Dr.Bradley was one of them, but they had more than just the various three star products.

 

aldecaker

Lifer
Feb 13, 2015
4,407
42
To me, the term "codger blend" conjures images of traditionally drugstore-available, inexpensive, typically burley-based American blends that have been (or were) on the scene with a long track record and much staying power. Some codger blends that I think of as such are:
Prince Albert

Carter Hall

Edgeworth Ready-Rubbed

Granger

Half & Half

Sir Walter Raleigh

Kentucky Club

Walnut
I don't really think of any house blends as codger blends due to their lack of widespread drugstore/5-and-dime distribution. Even the recent offerings that replicate them, such as Classic Burley Kake and P&C's Midtown series, are not true codger blends because they simply weren't there in the mass-market days of codgers actually smoking pipes. A replicated codger-style blend, yes, but you weren't going into the Woolworth's in 1965 to grab a tub of Classic Burley Kake.

 
Oct 7, 2016
2,451
5,195
@adlekaker, ok, I understand. The term was not familiar to me when I first came across this forum when I started smoking pipes again last summer.
But, where do blends fit that codgers smoked when they wanted something that they thought was better than drugstore tobacco (fewer preservatives and humectants) but didn't want to smoke Lane style aromatics or imported English blends like Dunhill, or MacBarens stuff? I used to hang out in an an Edwards in Atlanta that lived on providing their house blends -- Bishops Burley, Colonial, Vintage Cube, etc -- to the codger trade.
That happens to be a style of tobacco I like and has virtually disappeared from the market. So if something is said to be a codger blend, should I pass it by?

 

aldecaker

Lifer
Feb 13, 2015
4,407
42
No, I wouldn't think you should pass it by. I'm game for giving anything a try, tobacco-wise. Iwan Ries blends certainly have the staying power, so I think you're right, that probably is something your workaday pipe smoker would have gone after. They just would have to have been in the area, or perhaps mail-ordered it.

 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
Codger denotes a widely distributed blend available in pouch and usually tub at many local retail places, and also widely recognized brands. Those old standard over-the-counter brands that nearly all pipe smokers know. I don't think Dr. Bradley fits that definition. Codgers like convenience, and most would have to go out of their way to find Dr. Bradley.

 
Oct 7, 2016
2,451
5,195
I think I understand. When I got into pipe smoking in 1979, in part it stuck because of two people who helped me along the way, one of whom had worked at a Tinderbox in the past. He and the other person took me to Royal Cigar in downtown Atlanta. The tobacco they advised me to start with was their #7, a Lane English or Balkan blend. So, drugstore blends were never seriously on my radar screen.
However, over the next few years I did try many of the ones mentioned. Most of them were terrible. The chemicals were just too overwhelming. I do recall, from hanging around the Edward's in Clarkston (a suburb of Atlanta), that many of its customers had smoked these blends in the past and that "they" had "ruined" them. This would have been in the 1981-1987 time frame. And I am talking about a lot of people who sure looked like codgers to me!
Fromm the conversations here, and the reviews on TR, I have resolved to try to expand my horizons beyond what I was smoking when I got out of pipes in 2001, which was about 80% Virginia's and VaPers,and the rest some variety of Oriental or Latakia mixes. I just don't have the nerve to try anything that still comes in a pouch. I have never bought a tobacco in that form that doesn't have the tell tale slickness that, to me, is a sure sign of a product that has been laced with chemicals that are meant to assure "freshness" until the second coming.
So, I ordered several tins of product during the IPSD promotion s that seem to have been blended to emulate the best qualities of these blends, to wit, Edward G Robinson, Haunted Bookshelf, OJK, Billy Budd, etc. The only one I have gotten around to is Haunted Bookshop. It seems to me to be very much in the style of the Edwards blends I mentioned in the post above. I smoked half a dozen bowls in a variety of pipes, and I thought highly enough of it to jar the balance of an 8 ounce tin.
I picked off two tins of Pelican last week from Ries, and to ease the burden of the shipping costs, I had them toss in 7 ounces of Dr. Bradley's and 7 ounces of Old Colonial. Since I had just jarred the Haunted Bookshop, I popped the Bradley's. I have only smoked the one bowl, and my verdict is that it, too, reminds me of the old Edwards style.
The owner of the Edwards franchise used to tell us younger types that his blends were like what your father or grandfather would have smoked. The older customers would nod in agreement. But most of them had fled drugstore blends, and chose to patronize Edwards instead of the Lane and Sherman style aromatics that they could have bought out of the jars at any one of the five or six Tinderbox franchises around Atlanta at that time.
So, maybe Dr. Bradley's is not strictly a codger blend as that term is used here. I am OK with that. But it is a throwback to a style of tobacco I liked, along with Haunted Bookshop. I look forward to trying the others I have.

 

davidintexas

Part of the Furniture Now
Jun 4, 2013
673
209
Thanks for the history lesson on your experience with different blends back in the "good ole days" at that time oldgeezer. It was very interesting to me. Back in the late 70s I didn't smoke a pipe but was finishing up college and worked at an HEB supermarket down in South Texas. I worked the graveyard shift my last year and part of what I did was to restock the tobacco area every morning before I left. I sure wish I had paid more attention at the time. I cannot even remember if they sold pipe tobacco blends out of there at that time. You would think at least some of the OTC blends possibly. All I remember is stocking the cigarettes and the chewing tobacco. My roommate chewed tobacco so I remember some of those, but pipes....not so.

 

cally454

Starting to Get Obsessed
Dec 31, 2012
205
0
Read a bunch of tr reviews. Most think it is a coger blend or at least all American.

 

csharp

Starting to Get Obsessed
Dec 28, 2015
115
11
http://pipesmagazine.com/blog/radio-talk-show/the-pipes-magazine-radio-show-episode-84/

 
Oct 7, 2016
2,451
5,195
Maybe there needs to be a new category, but I am willing to say that Dr. Bradley's is a semi codger blend until someone comes up with another label.
BTW, the distribution of pipe tobacco was radically changing in the early 80's. Imagine the largest size moving box you would find at a U-Haul store. I was standing in Royal Cigar one Friday afternoon and the UPS guy wheeled one of those in with some more normal sized boxes. I was having a conversation about something else with another customer, but saw them open that box. It was full of large tins of Holiday. I doubt anyone would dispute that Holiday was a codger blend.
I went back to the shop the next week, and there wasn't a speck of Holiday in sight. I asked Bill Kiely, the owner, what happened to all the freaking Holiday? He patiently explained to me that they sent every bit of it out by mail order. He said that it was a tobacco that drug store and grocery store chains had stopped carrying, and when smokers called or wrote the manufacturer asking where to find it, Royal was one of the places that the manufacturer recommended. This was an unseen to most walk in customers part of their business that became an increasingly important part of their business.
So, codgers did use mail order when they were forced to.

 
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