More than an hour before showtime, the bar at the famed Peabody Hotel in Memphis filled with people hoping to get a gander at the stars. It paid to get an early seat since these performers only reached about ankle height.
Since the 1930s, The Peabody Duck march has drawn onlookers twice daily. In the morning, the birds ― one drake and four hens ― ride the elevator from their rooftop marble and glass home to the lobby. Once on the ground floor, the birds traverse a red-carpeted pathway to a century-old fountain, where they swim and eat until they perform the journey in reverse, heading back to the roof at 5 p.m.
It's a tradition filled with pomp and circumstance. And as fun as the present-day duck march has come to be, the origin story of the Peabody Ducks is nearly as interesting ― and it all reportedly started with a bottle of Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey.
"It goes all the way back to 1933," explained Kenon Walker, the man currently employed in the much-coveted position of Peabody Duckmaster, addressing the crowd gathered around the fountain.
That's the year Frank Schutt, general manager of the then-young hotel, and his friend Chip Barwick went on a winter duck hunt along the icy waters of the Mississippi in Arkansas, using live ducks as decoys, as was legal at the time.
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"They knew they'd have to find a creative way to stay warm while they were out there," he continued. "So they decided to take another colleague along with them to help them stay warm in the cold ― a colleague by the name of Jack Daniel's ― otherwise known as fine Tennessee sipping whiskey."
As the day grew long, the bottle grew emptier. Soon, they hatched a plan for a bit of a risky prank.
"They thought it would be a funny idea to bring those live duck decoys back here, to the Peabody Hotel, and set them loose inside of this lobby fountain, so that is exactly what they did," Walker said. "Then they laughed it off and they went back up to their rooms for the evening."
Schutt reportedly woke sober and alarmed at the potential chaos he had created. He was the general manager, after all.
He rushed down to the lobby, anticipating duck havoc.
"But when he got down here, he was surprised to find two things," Walker said, gesturing toward the scene of the crime. "No. 1: the ducks were still right here inside this fountain. They hadn't gone anywhere. And No. 2: They started to attract visitors."
People were delighted to see live animals frolicking inside a place of such high repute as The Peabody. Bellman Edward Pembroke took note and decided to coax the ducks into a full-on act. He trained them to live in a rooftop bird palace, march across the roof to the elevator, then down to the lobby, then swim all day within view of guests. It's a tradition that endures today.
"He was more than just a bellman," Walker said. "He was a brilliant man. It just so happened that earlier in his life, Mr. Edward Pembroke had been a trainer for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus."
Mr. Pembroke served as Duckmaster until his retirement in 1991.
The Peabody Duckmaster is now a full-time position, with the person employed in that role serving as caretaker and ambassador for the ducks, which are born and raised at an undisclosed farm. They're then returned to that farm every 3-4 months and exchanged for a fresh batch of waterfowl.
"We don't train them with food or lay out trails of grain for them to march down the red carpet the first time," said Peabody communications director Kelly Brock. "We try to keep them as wild animals so that when they go back to the wild after three or four months they can fly off and be wild ducks."
The Peabody Hotel has a robust relationship with Jack Daniel's, with drink specials and packages revolving around the 50-odd private barrels the hotel has selected from the Lynchburg distillery since 2008. That begs the question: Are we sure that was really Jack Daniel's those hunters were sipping on the banks of the Mississippi?
"That's the story," Brock said. "And I don't even know how long that's been a part of the story, but we've been really going the extra mile to incorporate Jack Daniel's into the story since somewhere in the 2000s. When the Duckmaster does their speech, we've always referred to it as simply 'Tennessee whiskey,' but we know what that means."
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