A book bursting with musicians, mafia and more
Willie Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino and Frankie Valli walk into a bar in Toledo… what sounds like the beginning of a joke, is actually a fascinating part of Toledo history, all documented in a new book, A Bar in Toledo by Dominic Vaiana and Stephanie Abbajay.
Stephanie Abbajay’s uncle Donnie owned a failing nightclub in Toledo in 1962. Duane Abbajay, Donnie’s brother, bought the club after his mother’s plea to help his brother. Duane paid all the club’s debts, spruced the place up and packed the club with important rock and roll musicians of the time (and of historic significance) – Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Frankie Valli and The Everly Brothers, for starters. But by the early 1970s, the popularity of the bar was again taking a dive. Duane pivoted and renamed the bar Toledo’s Country Palace.
The country-themed nightclub struggled until Hal Bynum, a songwriter from Nashville, boarded a bus on a Friday night in order to get out of town and do “some serious drinking” after having ongoing marital problems. He arrived in Toledo the next morning. After hitting the Country Palace to achieve his weekend goal, Bynum overheard a man’s conversation with his estranged wife. Angry words were exchanged and the man said, “All I can say is that you picked a fine time to leave me.” No names were exchanged, Bynum added the name Lucille later. After the song’s released, country music fans traveled to the bar to see the place that inspired the Grammy-winning hit.
Memories of the Palace
During her childhood, Stephanie (Duane’s daughter) remembers her dad taking her to the bar with him on Saturday mornings, after stopping for breakfast at the bus depot nearby to pick up honey buns and pints of milk. “While dad restocked the bar and counted money, my siblings and I would play bartender, dance on the stage, play pool, play with the band’s instruments and generally run around the place. Perhaps it was not the healthiest environment for kids, but we were in heaven. Much later, when I was in college, my friends and I would drive up from Kenyon and go to The Peppermint Club (the successor name of the club). It was well past its prime by then, but we thought it was so cool,” Stephanie explains.
It was about 15 years ago that Stephanie started writing a memoir about her dad’s very successful bar business. After shopping it to different agencies with no luck, she wrote an article about the success of her father’s nightclub for The American Interest magazine. Vaiana worked for a TV production at the time and helped Stephanie pitch her story as a TV show. After some initial interest from TV types, the pandemic killed all those plans. Vaiana pitched an idea for a book to Abbajay and they began the project, in a pandemic world that gave them nothing but time.
Underworld connections
With his suspicions heightened, Vaiana felt there was more to the story of this highly successful rock-and-roll turned country-and western nightclub. Via the Freedom of Information Act, Vaiana found a cache of FBI files that confirmed Duane Abbajay’s Peppermint Club was a front for figures in organized crime. Duane Abbajay’s business partners (“golfing buddies,” as Stephanie remembers them) with wildly colorful names were made men in the Detroit Partnership (aka the Detroit Mafia), an Italian-American organized crime family that operated in Detroit.
“This is a remarkable story. It’s the American Dream and a cautionary tale at the same time. It’s got all the elements for a great American story — son of immigrants, rough-and-tumble post-war upbringing, baby of the family, tries to do the right thing, gets in bed with the wrong people, becomes a huge success but at a very high price, etc. The scope of Duane’s story is cinematic, really. And it’s all true,” Stephanie said.
When Duane Abbajay purchased the bar in 1963, his plan was to sell it within a year’s time while making a profit, but his bar was so successful, he owned it until 2012. Stephane, who never knew about the mafia connection, presumes her dad didn’t want to quit because of the income the bar provided and, perhaps, couldn’t quit because his “golfing buddies” wouldn’t let him.
“He was really torn. He hated the bar business. He hated the late nights. He was a minor celebrity (which he actually hated, as he was actually a very shy man), but he was employing lots of people, making lots of money for lots of people, making great, life-long friends and booking big names in music. He really loved his customers and his employees and couldn’t just walk away from all that – especially what we know now – that his partners probably wouldn’t let him. I think he had a real love-hate relationship with his clubs, and that he sacrificed a lot to keep them going,” Stephanie said.
Vaiana said the ultimate goal is to bring the story of Duane Abbajay and his successful nightclub, along with his colorful cast of characters to the big or small screen. “Our goal has always been to adapt this story into a movie or TV series. We’ve pitched several production companies and screenwriters and we’ll keep pounding the pavement until we find the right person or team who shares our vision,” Vaiana said.
A Bar in Toledo is published by University Press and is available to order at utoledopress.com/ABIT.html or on Amazon.
