by Ronald Brantley
The Coffee Breaker
If you asked all the people in this area if they’d ever eaten a Cotton’s Bar-B-Que plate or sandwich, 99 percent would answer “Yes.” Well, let me tell you a little more about this man.
It’s hard to know where to start on this man’s life—how he got started, how he wound up.
First, it’s best to tell you that he was one of five brothers and three sisters. As all his brothers worked in the fields with his farmer father, his mother kept him back to help clean the house and cook the meals to feed the family.
Their home place was pretty much where they are now, and everyone in the area knew it as Cotton’s Crossroads.
They had owned that property since before the Civil War.
I knew Alvin Ward, a young man that started working for Ralph Cotton when he was a young boy around 11 years old. Alvin and I became acquainted when he was in the Eclectic Rescue Unit as a young man and I was in the Tallassee Unit.
Alvin spoke of Ralph Cotton just like he would a father.
There have been three Cotton Bar-B-Que Cafes. The first one was built after Ralph’s mama died in 1949, and he came back to Cotton’s Crossroads to take care of his aging daddy.
Ralph was the only single one of the Cotton kids. Where had Ralph been for so long?
When he was a teenager about 15, a traveling medicine show with music came to Eclectic.
They hired the handsome young man for his singing ability and fiddle playing, and traveled the Midwest. He could also play the guitar.
He headquartered in Kansas City, Kansas.
While there, he was part owner of a restaurant.
The lady he was a partner with had a secret sauce for the barbecue. She wouldn’t even tell Ralph what made up the sauce.
Ralph was doing pretty well with his music. One newspaper article I read said that Ralph Cotton headlined the Strand Theatre bill.
They said Ralph was one of the South’s best blues singers and it lists many other entertainers but it shows a big picture of Ralph with his guitar.
Ralph’s daddy died about two years after his mother died. Ralph was 45 at the time.
With scrap lumber, Ralph built a barbecue restaurant and soon after it opened, it burned.
The woman had given him the secret recipe. He suspected it was arson and he was mad. He built the cement block building with which all of us are so familiar.
Did you ever look on the wall at the picture of his granddaddy with his Civil War discharge? There were originally 102 acres that his grandfather owned when he settled here after the Civil War. The old Cotton Graveyard is located behind the old home place where his granddaddy and many relatives are buried.
After Ralph came Alvin Ward, the only man to whom Ralph Cotton gave the secret recipe. The newest of the three restaurants is still open. Do they still use the secret recipe? Who did Alvin Ward pass it on to or did it go to the grave when Alvin died so suddenly? Ask them the next time you go to Cotton’s. I’ve only scratched the surface; maybe later I’ll continue this story. Thanks to Dick Wade for his help.
