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The Jake Story

by Annie Raines

This unassuming condo building in Boston’s North
End is a long way from the Mississippi Blues Trail,
but it has an important place in Blues History. It
was the site of Hub Products, the company that
produced a poisonous batch of the patent medicine

Jamaican Ginger Extract in the late 1920s. This
“Jake,” as it was known, contained an ingredient
called Tri-ortho-cresyl phosphate (TOCP), a
solvent for improving the performance of air plane
paint. It also performed well in Prohibition-era
tests of alcohol-containing beverages, leaving

enough solids behind to qualify as legal hooch.

The hooch in question was poured into barrels and
shipped as syrup, distributed locally and across
the Midwest and South, to be bottled and combined
with soda and other mixers. Before shipping the

TOCP-laden beverage, Hub Products owners and
brothers-in-law Harry Gross and Max Reisman
confirmed that the formula had been tested on
dogs and monkeys with no ill effects. However,
when imbibed by humans, the chemical turned out
to have devastating consequences, causing paralysis of the lower limbs and a peculiar shuffling gait

that became known as the “Jake Walk”.

The first few victims staggered into doctors’ offices in Oklahoma City. They were followed by dozens
and then hundreds more across the nation, from Wichita, Kansas to Worcester, Massachusetts. One
thousand cases were identified in Mississippi. What was at first a mysterious affliction appeared to

be an emerging epidemic.

The doctors thought otherwise: Women and children seemed largely unaffected. Most victims were
men, usually of lower-class status, often middle-aged and living alone. Many did not want to admit
that they drank alcohol. While “Rummies” could obtain Jake legally, the stigma kept them closeted.
Now their secret shame was revealed in their pathetic shambling, as they struggled to pick up their
feet and slap them onto the ground to walk. The TOCP had eaten away their sacral nerves. Many were

rendered impotent.

The newspapers carried reports of new cases and an investigation that had been launched to pinpoint
the source of the toxin. They should have checked with blues man Ishmon Bracey, who recorded ‘Jake
Liquor Blues’ only a few weeks after the first case was discovered in 1930. Soon afterwards, Tommy

Johnson recorded ‘Alcohol and Jake Blues’. a fitting follow up to 1928’s ‘Canned Heat Blues’, about his
penchant for the relatively safe methanol cocktail known as Sterno. Both Black and White musicians,