‘A Bar In Toledo’ recounts story of the downtown club that inspired a hit

There was just something about Duane Abbajay.

A dashing man of Syrian descent, with olive skin and a penchant for Aramis cologne, Abbajay was the kind of guy you could tell a dozen stories about. So that’s what authors Dominic Vaiana and Stephanie Abbajay did with A Bar In Toledo: The Untold Story of a Mafia Front Man and a Grammy-Winning Song, recently published by the University of Toledo Press.

The book tells the story Abbajay and one of the most happening joints in Toledo, the former Burt’s Theatre at 725 Jefferson Ave.

Today the vacant building, which was most recently Caesar’s Show Bar, stands derelict. But a few generations ago, when it housed the Peppermint Club in the 1960s, people used to line up around the block to see early rock ‘n’ rollers Jerry Lee Lewis and the Everly Brothers, or rock around the clock to the house band the Raging Storms. This was a time where you got dressed up to go out. Men wore suits and hats, women wore furs, and the smoke of a hundred cigarettes permeated the room.

And there, holding court in his establishment, was the duke of Toledo nightlife Duane Abbajay.

A Bar In Toledo recounts how he got there: Abbajay spent most of his youth in the Vistula neighborhood living not too far away from a boy named Jameel Joseph Farah, who grew up to be an actor named Jamie Farr. Abbajay graduated from Woodward High School in 1951. A certified ladies man with a roving eye, the rakish Abbajay had a child out of wedlock in the 1950s, a social sin in those days. He married Marie Kovacik in 1957, and she died a year after giving birth to their son Dino.

In 1962, two big events occurred in Abbajay’s life: He married his second wife Mary Baldwin, with whom he would have three children, and he took over the Peppermint Club from his brother Donny, who was running it into the ground.

Abbajay brought a new energy to the Peppermint Club, installing a 12-foot candy cane on the front sign. Then in the ‘70s, following the popularity of country-western music and culture, Abbajay closed it and re-opened the nightclub as the Country Palace, Toledo’s first Urban Cowboy-style honkytonk.

It was there, on a fateful day in 1974, that Nashville songwriter Hal Bynum found himself watching a domestic tiff develop between a husband and wife. Bynum wrote about the encounter “at a bar in Toledo” in his song “Lucille,” which Kenny Rogers took to the top of the charts in 1977.

“Lucille” forever enshrined the building at 725 Jefferson into pop culture history, and Rogers himself visited the Country Palace in late 1977 prior to a performance at the Toledo Sports Arena. Rogers even attempted to leave his boot prints and hand prints in concrete to mark the occasion of his visit, but the boots stuck to the cement and Rogers left the place in his socks, according to A Bar In Toledo.

The Country Palace became a tourist attraction following the success of “Lucille,” and Abbajay, whom the book explains had an uneasy relationship with Toledo’s organized crime syndicates, became a wealthy man, dealing exclusively in cash for his various mob-related business dealings. His children recalled getting allowances upwards of $75 a week. And this was in 1970s dollars.

The ‘80s were filled with tragedy for Abbajay. He and his wife split in 1980 after she had had enough of his infidelity. His son Bobby died in 1983, and his now-ex-wife died of cancer in 1986. Abbajay sold the Country Palace in 1989. He died in 2017.

That could have been the end of Abbajay’s story, but his daughter Stephanie, who previously co-owned a bar in Washington, D.C. called the Toledo Club that was filled with photos and memorabilia from her father, knew she had an interesting story as she considered her father’s life. In 2015 she published an article about her father in the American Interest magazine, which garnered a lot of positive attention and led her to team up with producer Vaiana. The plan was initially to develop a scripted television show about her father’s life, but plans were scrapped after the coronavirus pandemic hit.

“We decided if it couldn’t be a TV show, then let’s make it a book,” Vaiana said. “We started going down the rabbit hole of these FBI reports and interviews and archives and news articles, and we found out the story was deeper and crazier than either of us ever thought.”

Vaiana said A Bar In Toledo took two years to research and write.

“The writing is the easy part because once you piece all the information together it kind of comes together,” he said. “But when you’re dealing with a story like this, when the majority of the key players are in dead, or in jail, or won’t want to speak on record, that’s a challenge.”

At the book release party on Friday, which was held at the Hylant Building, a block away from Duane Abbajay’s old building, Stephanie Abbajay spoke about her complicated father.

“This book is and will be many things to many people. For me, it’s the incredible story of an incredible man, of a life well lived, warts and all. And it’s a story that needs to be shared,” she said. “For in Duane’s own words from 2014, ‘Steffy, who’s had a better life than me?’”

Contact Jason Webber at: jwebber@theblade.com.