Frank Hennessy never passed up a chance to promote National Beer. It was his job to do so for 18 years (1957 to 1975), and he approached the job with legendary gusto.
Advertising executive John Schneider III (1918-2009) has been credited with “making Boh synonymous with Baltimore.” He may also share part of the credit for making the name “Frank Hennessy” synonymous with Boh. It was Schneider who put Hennessy aboard a skipjack named “Chester Peake” and sent him “to every corner of Tidewater Maryland” as the “Roving Ambassador of the Chesapeake Bay.”
The sail of the 1915 skipjack was embroidered with the face of the iconic “Mr. Boh.”
Afro-American, August 1966
When Hennessy passed away in 2000, the Sun had many stories to share:
“Dubbed “Commodore of the Chesapeake” by Gov. Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin, Hennessy was a familiar figure to Bay yachtsman as he cruised the Bay from the the C & D Canal to Smith Island, dressed in a snappy nautical cap, white duck pants and blue blazer.
“During the summer months we’ll be cruising the Chesapeake Bay, attending races, regattas and other special events, hoping that Chester Peake will serve as a graceful symbol of the wonderful Land of Pleasant Living,” [Hennessy] told The Sun.
Hennessy, an excellent outdoors cook who gained honors as the Male Barbecuing Champion at the national chicken grill-off in Selbyville, Del., was the creator of the Chesapeake BAYke.
“We have our wonderful crab feasts, oyster and bull roasts but there’s no identifying name like New England clambake or Hawaiian luau, and my wife and I got to thinking about a Chesapeake BAYke,” he told The Sun in an interview.
Firing up his gigantic Weber Big Smokey grill, Hennessy and his wife, Rita, whom he married in 1938, used such strictly local Maryland ingredients as rockfish, clams, oysters, blue crabs, corn and broiler chicken to create the feast.
Hennessy, who was born in St. Louis and reared in Memphis, always claimed one of his grilling secrets was using Arkansas swamp hickory chips.” – True Chesapeake Character, Frederick N. Rasmussen, Baltimore Sun, 2000
The concept of the somewhat-awkwardly-named Chesapeake BAYke provided Hennessy with more opportunities to promote Natty Boh in local newspapers.
He copyrighted the term in 1964.
In 1960, Hennessy took home the prize in the Barbeque division of the Delmarva Poultry Industry’s National Chicken Cooking Contest (more on that event can be found in this post). His recipe for a broiled and basted chicken features a not-so-secret addition. You guessed it.
National Beer TV ad 1960s, youtube.com
I remember my own introduction to Boh. After watching a friend’s band at the Ottobar in the late 90s, we migrated to the bar upstairs. Someone asked what beer was the cheapest. “Natty Boh-boh!” was a friend’s lyrical reply. At a buck fifty, no one needed any further rationale for drinking National Bohemian.
A lot of Baltimoreans still carry the banner of Natty Boh from bars to backyard barbecues, despite the fact that the beer is now brewed in North Carolina and Georgia. It no longer costs a buck fifty, but neither does anything else. Nor are you likely to hear about raconteurs cruising the bay for the sole purpose of glorifying a beer. The unchanging label of Natty Boh remains a reminder of a time when Baltimore was a little bit cheaper and a little bit weirder.
Rita & Frank Hennessey in 1984, Baltimore Sun photo: Anne Kornreich. ebay.com
Recipe:
Recipe notes: I didn’t have straight up MSG so I used Sazón, a wonderful seasoning composed primarily of MSG. No regrets. I cooked the chicken in the middle of a ring of coals for even heat. Salt the chicken the day before. It’s called dry brining, get the net.
