- Kevin Godbee
- Nov 17, 2011
- 1 min read
It is with deep sadness, shock, and regret that we bring you the news of the untimely passing of Jay Jones of Hermit Tobacco. We received second-hand word over night, and have been waiting for confirmation and details until now. We have confirmation from different industry sources that he has indeed passed, but we do not have other details, such as the official cause of death and his age. Suffice it to say that he appeared at least two to three decades away from old age.
Jay passed on the morning of November 16, 2011. We have been told that he finished his morning chores, and then told Louise that he felt tired and was going to take a nap. He never woke-up. Speculation is a stroke or heart-attack, but is not official.
Jay was known and loved by many in the pipe community. You could see him and Louise at almost all of the pipe shows, and it seems fitting to describe the man as a loveable guy. He was the creator of the Hermit line of tobaccos and was also an avid Dunhill pipe collector, amongst other areas of collecting.
We send our deepest condolences to his partner in business and in life, Louise, and to the rest of his family and friends.
More information on Hermit Tobacco, Jay’s collecting and other interests can be found at http://pipestyle.com/
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Written by Kevin Godbee
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Well there’s nothing like a touch of the plague to usher in the changing season. Leaving the airport just when the first advertisements for all things pumpkin spice began to appear—lattes, muffins, shampoos, trash bags, and myriad other concoctions—so, too, my ability to breathe freely disappeared. The unfortunate side effect of losing one’s sense of taste and smell for weeks is the utter inability to enjoy tobacco. Not that I consider myself an expert on anything but my own tastes, but be forewarned that this review was made with mildly impugned sensory equipment. Just when a comforting pipe was most needed, its comfort was denied. Be that as it may, the road to recovery found me limping along on one lung this past month, trying to wrest the particulars of two blends on offer from Sutliff: the latest 175th Anniversary blend, Silver Quarter, as well as their spooky seasonal Maple Shadows II. Silver Quarter is a new style on offer from Sutliff, their first coin-cut blend. Naturally a Virginia-Perique, it is enhanced with a traditional core of black Cavendish. In the tin it holds much promise, with a lightly bready and very woody, if ever-so-slightly sour, aroma. After some time acclimating to air, the bouquet softens further and offers hints of the burley with some chocolaty notes wafting through the more dominant dry grassy aspect. The tin art is of a coin-style bas-relief bust, presumably of a founding Sutliff brother, à la The Old Boss On the reverse of the tin we find the blend’s description: Reflecting on Sutliffs 175 years of tobacco excellence, we came across a brand that embodies true value, SILVER QUARTER. This name pays homage to Sutliffs roots, the legacy of two brothers who popularized pipe smoking in the burgeoning mining society of San Francisco. We celebrate this heritage with a coin cut composed of the finest African Virginias, complemented by a core of Perique and Black Cavendish. The tin notes are, forgive the pun, on the nose for a good VaPer blend: mild tart sweetness peeking out from behind dried hay and slight chocolate undertones, with a lightly tannic finish of weathered oak. It is always a joy to prepare a coin cut, my preference being to put a few in my palm and vigorously warm my hands together to fully break them apart. These well-formed discs pack and light easily, and smoke with little prodding to the end of the bowl. For technical points it scores well—it smokes light, and it’s easy to tend the ember. While it gets sharp after a few quick bowls, pacing should be heeded to easily smoke down to the heel without inviting bite. Of the flavor, though, I am left a bit wanting. There are tart and high notes aplenty, but very little of the lemony citrus I would anticipate, as well as scant midtones; they tend more toward the red wine-vinegary and sour. The flavors are muted, also, lacking the sweetness and piquancy of other marques—the small measure of Perique tickles the nose now and again with peppery hints, and there is a smidge of a deeper sweetness to be found in the Cavendish from puff to puff, but overall it lacks some dynamism. The Virginias, to my palate, come off a bit on the dry side, and here they dominate the blend. The aftertaste and mouthfeel are neutral, again evincing more of the dry, woody, tartly tannic end of the spectrum. The blend has plenty of polish, but not enough depth or richness (*yet) to make it a standout. Here, comparisons are inevitable: Luxury Bullseye Flake has more sweetness, both from its Virginia as well as its Cavendish, and a better finish; Davidoff is similar but with a pronounced umami that is absent here; as for Escudo, I haven’t had any fresh tins lately so it would be unfair to compare. While it rates as a solid, fairly mild smoke, particularly to lovers of the genre, it does not surprise with any exceptional flavors. To be fair, all the boxes have been checked for the blend to benefit from some real aging, and it would be worth checking in on this after a couple of years sealed away. I’ve set half my tin aside to sample again in a month or two, in case I’m merely suffering from the lingering effects of parosmia, and will amend this review in that case. Maple Shadows II, on the other hand, made up for the weeks of sniffling and sneezing I’d endured. Offered in a full 8 ounce tin with delightfully spooky Halloween art, it’s (hopefully) enough to last through the season. Somehow I had missed this last year, so it’s a real pleasure to get some in my candy bucket this year. As the chilling winds of autumn draw eerie prattle from contorted, deciduous limbs, we find ourselves possessed by the spirit of the season. Bewitched by a dissonant charm, we’ve created Maple Shadows. In a season that is defined by the unlikely harmony of treats and frights, we’ve joined the enchanting sweetness of maple with the earthy spice of Dark Fired Kentucky for a smoking experience that captures the senses with an otherworldly fusion of flavor. This may be the best aromatic blend Sutliff’s ever made—and they make a ton of them. First off, it’s not overbearing in the least—quite the opposite, it is also one of the more restrained aromatics they’ve ever made, with a clear but very light topping that melds oh-so-well with their choice Kentucky added to the mix. Opening the tin, the sweet maple is up front and center, but so too is the must of fallen leaves, bready pie crusts, and a crackling fire in the hearth—a perfect invocation of Herbstdüfte in a can. Packing best in an open and capacious bowl, the flavoring is subtle, and recedes to the background while puffing. With a sweet coffee or tea to accompany, the aftertaste of the maple is reinvigorated on the palate […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 632. Our featured guest on tonight’s show is the host of the Pipe & Tamper Podcast, Mike Murphy. Brian and Mike will have an extended chat revolving around the days before, during and after the Las Vegas International Pipe Show. We will hear about their travels to the show and the anxiety of Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida at the same time while running a show and not knowing if your house is going to be there when you get home. In the end, the show went great and our homes survived, although many others in Florida were not so lucky. We’ll have clips from the show, and shoutouts to other podcasts and vlogs that were broadcasting from the pipe show.
That is incredibly sad news. They were a pleasure to order tobacco from. My thoughts are with his family & friends.
My deepest sympathies to Louise and the family. Jay was always a gentleman to me and all he came in contact with. I will always remember him that way and he will live forever in his great spirit.
Mike Beltranena
NYC Pipe Club
So sad to hear about the passing of Jay Jones. It was a pleasure to have done buisness with Jay. My condolences to His Family and Friends.
Thoughts and prayers.
Lowell and Diane
Thank you for this article and for your website on the whole. I’ve just subscribed to your news feed.
May Jay’s family be blessed real good with strength to carry on with peace love and happiness through the best of health.
So sorry to hear this.
Jay was one of the GOOD ONES!
He will be missed.
THIS IS VERY SAD NEWS, I MISSED HIM AND HIS WIFE AT THE CORPS SHOW THIS YEAR.
MAY GOD BLESS
TEDDY
I met Jay at the latest Chicago show. I had a great time sharing drinks and tobacco with him and Louise in their room. It is very sad to know he’s no longer with us.
Be strong, Louise.
RIP
The GKCPC is terribly saddened by this news. We hope to get some information about expressing our deep condolences to Louise, the family, and friends. He was just at our show in June.
Dan C., Treasurer
GKCPC
That is sad news. My deepest condolences to his family and friends at this time.
Saddened to hear of the loss of someone so close to the pipe community. My thoughts and prayers go out to Louise. God Bless.
Jay was my friend. I am deeply saddened by his passing. Peace and Prayers for Louise.
Lawdog
I am saddened to hear this news – I ordered from Hermit tobaccos many a time – I especially loved Jay’s Holiday Blend he came out with every Fall. My heartfelt condolences.
The entire TAPS pipe club sends their condolences to Louise. Jay was a very big part of our hobby and will be misseds by all. RIP Jay.
I’m sorry for him, he must have been a great person. May God have mercy.
god bless jay, and his family. rip sir. very sad.
mike lyvers.
Tonight I’ll open a new tin of Captain Earle and smoke it in the Charatan Canadian I bought from Jay at St. Louis. RIP my friend. Hans
My condolences go out to family and friends. One can only hope for a legacy like his.
I am heartbroken. Jay was such a good friend to me and my family. I met Jay and Louise at the Charlotte show in 1996 I think. It was my first pipe show. We all chatted for quite some time. I was a young and enthusiastic collector and purchased a WW2 service issue pipe kit from them. When I got home it was missing something and I called them and we chatted some more and they sent me the missing piece. At this time I had started a hobby business online, it was a used pipe web site called pipestand.com, with one small estate collection I had purchased. But I was running out of pipes. Louise and Jay and I had hit it off so well that almost overnight we were in business together. I think our site was about the second or third one online in the business at that time. Jay and Louise’s knowledge, energy and guidance grew the business exponentially overnight. It was one of the best things to happen for my young family as it allowed my wife to stay home with our toddler instead of working. I can never thank Jay and Louise enough for that. Jay and Louise taught me so much about pipes and business and life, they were a surrogate big brother and big sister to me. For such a big and burly guy Jay was in reality a gentle and generous man. We operated and grew the business together for a few years. It was so much fun, doing what you love with people you love.
Eventually my day-job became successful and I had to consider leaving our web business. We all talked about how to do it and slowly transitioned it. It was hard to say goodbye to something so fun. But soon Jay came to be just about as geeky as me with computers. He and Louise took their site Pipestyle to new heights.
As often happens when you live 3 or 4 states away, contact between friends becomes more sporadic. Yet my affection for Jay and Louise remains as strong today as when we were speaking on the phone every night in those halcyon days of our young pipe business. I am comforted by the fact that Jay was blessed to have Louise as his soul mate and partner in all aspects of his life. His days were too short, but the way he lived those days is an example to us all.
Rob Davis
So sad for the loss of Jay. He and Louise are in my prayers. May he rest in peace. Al
Wonderful person. Great, dry, sense of humor.
Met him at the St. Louis Pipe Show and am glad to have been able to make his acquaintance.
The world is a lesser place for his passing.
Having experienced they untimely passing of my brother this year, my heart truly goes out to Louise. Although I did not know Jay well, he was always friendly to me and I looked forward to seeing him at a show. There is no easy way to get through such a sorrowful event, but time is a patient healer. I wish peace, comfort, and strength for Louise. Rest in peace, Jay.
I was searching for Jay and Louise address to send then a Christmas card when I came upon this. We are so saddened. Jay was a delight to be around. He was always smiling and was an overall great guy. Louise if you read this please know we are thinking of you. We will miss Jay.
Jay, God Bless and R.I.P. Cliff