Photo by Rene’ Greblo

SPRINGFIELD, Mo.—–The sameness that shades popular culture in America has not arrived along the Route 66 bypass on the northwest end of Springfield. A white aluminum shack that looks like a large trailer sits a good distance from the road. A portable barbecue stand is sizzling adjacent to the gravel driveway.

You have arrived at an unfiltered destination:

Luttrell’s Auction and Live Music Show, 2939 W. Kearney.

And the new Blue Grass BBQ.

Auction house owner Don Luttrell claims his business is the only auction house-live music venue west of the Mississippi River. It is an amazing joint. I haven’t seen live country music in such an authentic setting since the 1970s and 80s nights of the Sundowners’ RR Ranch in Chicago’s Loop.

On Friday and Saturday nights the house “Barn Band” plays traditional country music on a small stage illuminated by trippy multi-colored floor lamps. The band features 76-year-old Ozark Jubilee veterans Roger Blevins (pedal steel guitar) and lead guitarist Jerry Menown (lead guitar) as well as country-rock drummer “Bobby” Llloyd Hicks (Morells, Skeletons, NRBQ and about 45 other bands.)

Fans sit on white plastic chairs and when someone like Merle Haggard’s ex-wife Leona Williams appears, the crowd overflows into five rows of wooden bleachers. The capacity of the room is about 200 people.

An early 20th Century wooden hand cranked phone hangs on a wall behind the stage. Almost everyone in the audience is over 50 years old. No alcohol is served and Luttrell promptly ends his three-hour revue at 9 p.m. so people can get home early to rest for church or hit the first set atany other Springfield live music club.

The Barn Band numbers between five and seven people depending on who is sitting in. They cover traditional country music like Merle Haggard’s “Workin’ Man Blues” and Dave Dudley’s “Six Days On the Road.” For ringers the band will throw in The Surfaris instrumental hit “Wipeout” where Hicks leaps up and plays his drums standing up. He’ll also contribute vocals on rhythm and blues chestnuts like LaVern Baker’s 1954 hit “Tweedle Dee.” Blevins will introduce the 1959 Santo and Johnny instrumental “Sleep Walk” as an “all-skate” for when people moved in more graceful circles.

Roger Blevins (L), Jerry Menown and The Barn Band (Photo by Rene’ Greblo)

Hundreds of items from the weekly Thursday auctions remain uncovered on tables near the rear of the seating area.

The items are not for sale during concerts, although I did barter a brown monkey flower vase from Luttrell for $20.

Yes, different is good.

The wood frame auction and music barn building dates back to 1930 when it was built as a feed store. In the early 1950s the Springfield based Consumer’s Grocery chain rented the old feed store to sell a few items and store fireworks. A June 29, 1955 Kansas City Star article reported that a fireworks display exploded and spread through the building. Two young sisters were in the store buying a bottle of milk along with another female shopper. All three women died of smoke inhalation.  The City of Springfield soon banned the sale of fireworks and in 1955 the building was reborn as an auction house.

“I had a guy that came to one of my music shows and said they had a set up like this in North Carolina,” Luttrell said while taking tickets before an early November show. “That’s the only one I’ve heard of like this. And I don’t know if that still exists.”

The auction barn is on the Route 66 bypass. Luttrell said, “When you came into Springfield, 66 turned into Kearney Street. If you wanted to bypass the downtown you would come up here, turn and go south and be back on 66 again and go right into Mount Vernon and Halltown.”

Photo by Rene’ Greblo

Why, of course you would. Bob Wills had that hit “Big Ball’s in Halltown.”

Just last month Luttrell alllowed Springfield barbecue king Sam Ashley to pitch his “Bluegrass BBQ” food truck in his parking lot. The tricked out truck is custom built from a 1979 camper and serves Memphis style BBQ year round every day except Sunday and Monday.

“Everybody here has a wet rub,” said Ashley, 38. “I’m originally from southeast Missouri. Mine is a dry rub. I started about four years ago in my back yard with a little old smoker. It took me a few years to get it down. They’re smoked for 13 hours to get that smoked flavor.” His barbecue is tender and accented with a homemade  sweet-with-heat sauce, rich K.C. Masterpiece sauce doctored up with pepper, cayenne, brown sugar, paprika and a  bit of maple syrup. A pulled pork sandwich is $3.50.  Homemade chili $2.50. “Everything is made from scratch,” he said. “My smoked beans is my own recipe. Nothing is bought in a can and poured in here.” Ashley’s wife Lydia helps him out in the truck. They have five children and they’ve purchased kid’s stuff and a generator across the lot at the auction.

One side of their kitchen wall is filled with yellow post-it-notes of different Bible scriptures.

“Every week we try to put up a new scripture,” Ashley said.

Not far from his reach a hand-scrawled note read: “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.”—Psalm 118:8

Lydia and Sam Ashley, November, 2014 (Photo by Dave Hoekstra)

                           *                                                             *                                                                      *

The lean and gentle Don Luttrell, 68,  has lived in the working class barn neighborhood most of his life.

He likes to call himself “D.L.” and one of his favorite phrases is, “I’m not trying to shine my own apple.” Luttrell is a native of Lake of the Ozarks, about 90 miles from Springfield. His parents were farmers.

His brother Jim Luttrell, 86, is a former Springfield disc jockey who played guitar and mandolin as a member of the Ozark Playboys, another popular barn act. He also worked for Si Siman’s Top Talent booking agency. Siman (1921-1994) , a Springfield native and record executive discovered Chet Atkins and Porter Wagoner when he created the Ozark Jubilee radio show. Jim also gigged for 18 years in Branson, about 30 miles south of Springfield. Jim Luttrell recently retired because he is going blind.

Don Luttrell recalled, “Around 1980 I was driving up the road one night and I heard music coming out of this little old building. I pulled in and it was Harold Morrison (banjo) and Jimmy Gateley (guitar), who used to be on the Jubilee (1956-57). Harold had a little band backed up in here. About two-thirds of the crowd was his family sitting in the bleachers. I remember walking in and Harold looked at me and said, ‘Hello Hoss!’ He called everybody ‘Hoss.’ One night after buying the auction house (in 2007) I was laying in bed thinking, ‘If Harold did it that one night, why don’t I do it all the time?’ The music here is almost like what Bill Monroe was with Kentucky bluegrass. It is very original. And Springfield didn’t have a family-friendly music show where there was no drinking or anything.”

Springfield’s legacy of family-friendly live music shows was popularized with the Ozark Jubilee television show, which attracted 25 million television viewers across America between 1954 and 1960.

Luttrell started the live music in early 2008. “Leona Williams has grandchildren in the area so she sings here when she’s in town,” Luttrell said.

A playful black and white photo of Williams and Haggard in front of their tour bus hangs in the small auction house entry way.

“Norma Jean, who used to be with Porter Wagoner has been here. Claude Gray (who had the 1967 trucking hit “How Fast Them Trucks Can Go” and whose “I’ll Just Have Another Cup of Coffee” was reworked by Bob Marley as “One Cup of Coffee”) was just here from Texas. Former Domino Kings singer Brian Capps is in regular rotation with the accomplished house band. The late Springfield producer-bassist Lou Whitney often did the sound for the barn shows and sang with Capps. Whitney loved the acoustics because of the former feed store’s low ceiling.

The “Barn Band” plays within strokes of history.

Leona and Merle just havin’ fun on the barn wall of fame.

Blevins is regarded as one of the best steel players in the country and was a staff musician at KWTO, the Jubilee home radio station. Menown learned how to play Chet Atkins style while at the Jubilee and after the television show ended he played with Leroy Van Dyke and Patsy Cline. Hank Garland (1930-2004) became one of his favorite jazz-influenced guitarists so Menown made a similar seamless crossover move.

In the auction barn, Blevins and Menown form a modern day Jimmy Bryant (guitar, 1925-1980) and Springfield native Speedy West (pedal steel, 1924-2003) who recently have been popularized by Bill Frisell.

The connection makes perfect sense as Bryant played the Stratosphere Twin double-neck guitar, manufactured in the mid-1950s on Boonville Avenue in Springfield. Bryant’s adroit and fast picking delivered country hits like “Stratosphere Boogie” and “Caffeine Patrol,” both recorded with West. “People don’t realize it was tuned different,” Blevins said in an interview before their barn burning set. “It was tuned in thirds. That made the unique sound.”

Menown grew up with his mother and grandparents. His mom was a garment worker and his grandmother ran a dry cleaning business in nearby Nixa, Mo. Blevins’ father was a diesel mechanic and his mother worked at a furniture company south of Springfield. Blevins and Menown met in a 1954 fiddle contest in nearby Nixa. “And we’ve been playing together since we were 18,” Menown humble-boasted. “When I was a little boy I came to the barn with the neighbors to buy feed. Mr. Luttrell called us  to play. We first played with fiddling bands then this band formed.”

Blevins added, “The Ozark Jubilee put Springfield on the map pretty good. There’s a lot of good musicians here and a lot of big name acts came through here.” Carl Perkins made his national television debut singing “Blue Suede Shoes” on the Jubilee.

The Jubilee television show was filmed live at the since-razed Jewell Theater in downtown Springfield. The show gave birth to a mid-1950s nightlife scene that was similar to the mid-1950 and 60s  honky tonk scene of Lower Broadway in Nashville, Tn. Menown said, “It was very busy. I got to play on the Jubilee for three months with Porter Wagoner. There were three or four clubs on each corner. They’re all tore down now. There was a hotel. A nice lounge. A lot of musicians could find work in those four blocks there.”

Sometimes after Jubilee artists and staff musicians would adjourn to the Half A Hill Club, which ran from Prohibition through the 1970s.

Blevins said, “That was a set up club down on Long Pine. You brought your own bottle (of alcohol) and they sold drinks. It was a big place. Jerry and I worked there lots of times. There was dancing and a lot of drinking. It’s not there any more. There’s not as many live bands as there used to be. We still play what we call hard-core country music and Western Swing. It’s hard to find that any more.”

Don Luttrell (Photo by Rene’ Greblo)

The Springfield musicians do what they can to bring back the spirit of that scene at Luttrell’s Auction Barn.

Jim Luttrell said, “The Ozark Jubilee did a lot of good for Springfield. People came in from different states. They would eat at our restaurants and buy stuff.” Don Luttrell leaned back in the front entrance against a wall of empty slots used for auction tickets. He recalled, “Growing up around here it seemed like every family had a music background. Churches. Pie suppers. Square dances. People entertained themselves.”

Pie suppers?

“A girl would bring a pie and people would bid on it,” he continued. “I bought my girl friend’s pie for 15 cents but was ashamed to go eat with her. So she ate it with somebody else I guess.” Jim looked at his brother and said, “He was  born three months after I got married. So I know I’m older than he is. But he’s smarter than I am. It was rough for me growing up on the farm in the 1930s. Depression days. I worked for 15 cents a day and bought a package of king size cigarettes for 11 cents. I started out bad. But I made a career out of playing music. I played mandolin, guitar, harmonica, dobro, fiddle and ukelele. Besides Branson, I played 42 churches and 21 rest homes. And I enjoyed it.”

This music comes from deep within.

And it is sold to the highest bidder.

Bobby Lloyd Hicks (Drums) and Men at Work in the barn (Photo by Rene’ Greblo)

Bobby Lloyd Hicks (Drums) and Men at Work in the barn (Photo by Rene’ Greblo)