Dawn Neu (front left), who cooked for Roscoe Jones at Century Pines retirement home, where he lived for 14 years after violence struck his family, wipes away tears Monday. Julie Vallance (back), husband Chris Vallance and other musicians from Jones' church sing 'Peace in the Valley' at Jones' funeral at Nixa's McConnell Cemetery near Boaz. Steve J.P. Liang / News-Leader

Roscoe Jones (left) and his father, Clarence, were photographed with their mules in 1977. A similar photo appeared on an Ozark Mountain Daredevils album cover. News-Leader File Photo

A guitar; a photo of Roscoe Jones and his father, Clarence, that appeared on the cover of a rock album; and a photo of him playing guitar rest by the coffin of Roscoe Jones on Monday. Steve J.P. Liang / News-Leader

Roscoe Jones, 79, died Friday in an Ozark retirement home, Century Pines, his home for 14 years.

Ozark residents knew Roscoe as the man who grinned and waved at passers-by from the front yard of his home. Church acquaintances remembered a shy harmonica player and the only man allowed to chew tobacco during services. And neighborhood kids recall Roscoe as a friend who strummed a child-sized guitar and walked a pet duck on a leash.

"He was quite the celebrity here," said Lisa Byerly, administrator of Century Pines. "He had so many friends. I pulled in today and got teary-eyed because he wasn't sitting in his usual spot waving at people."

The rest of the world will remember Roscoe as a different kind of celebrity, one of two rustic men photographed standing with their mules on the cover of the 1976 Ozark Mountain Daredevils album, "Men From Earth."

The photo made Roscoe and his father, Clarence, famous. In time, the fame turned to terrible misfortune that abruptly ended the men's old-fashioned country life.

"It was such a cruel crime," a former highway patrol investigator recalled, "an ordinary person wouldn't have survived."

Salt of the earth

Roscoe Jones was born on Christmas Day 1923. His mother died when he was 2, leaving Roscoe and Clarence alone to eke out a living on their 40-acre farm near Boaz.

The two farmed and did odd jobs, often taking hay or grain for trade instead of money.

"They were both just hard-working men," said former neighbor Maxine Lehman, who remembers the two often staying for dinner after working on her father's farm. "He loved paw-paws and persimmons. They both loved turnips."

Clarence and Roscoe, neither of whom could read, maintained a simple rural lifestyle in a small uninsulated cabin, raising vegetables, keeping milk cows and driving a mule-drawn wagon to Nixa or Clever for groceries, well into the 1980s.

"They lived like regular hillbillies," said Jim Ghan, a former neighbor. "They had a wood stove to cook on. They would get out and shoot rabbits to live on. If Roscoe got a new pair of overalls, he would wear the clean ones right over the old ones."

Roscoe was a quiet, simple man who had earned people's respect.

"He was just a good guy," said Earl Frazier, another former neighbor. "He'd do anything in the world for you, if he could."

Noisy neighbors

Modern times crept closer into Roscoe and Clarence's life in the 1970s, when a member of a rock band moved in down the road.

"He and his father would go past my house every day," recalled Michael "Supe" Granda, then the bassist in the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, now living in Nashville.

"When they went past, I would wave, and they would wave back and smile, as good neighbors do, and on several occasion they would stop and talk."

Granda said the band often practiced in an outbuilding near his house, rocking the normally quiet countryside with guitar amps.

"They would stop and peek around the corner out of curiosity, to see what all the racket was, and I would welcome them in," Granda said.

The two were music lovers, especially Roscoe, who sometimes stayed to listen to the band.

"He, at all times, had a harmonica in his pocket," Granda said. "He would come into our rehearsal and get his harmonica out and play along with the band. Of course you couldn't hear him, because we had a million amplifiers blowing away, but we allowed him to hang out and be one of the guys. He enjoyed that."

The band enjoyed Roscoe and Clarence, too, and the traditional lifestyle the men employed. The group decided to photograph them and their mules for the cover of their fourth album.

Granda and Springfield photographer Jim Mayfield set out for the Jones home early one morning and asked if they could take pictures of their mules.

"After a few snapshots of the mules, Roscoe said something like, 'Well, maybe we can get in the picture.' I turned to Mayfield and said 'Go!'"

The photo appeared on tens of thousands of LPs, posters, T-shirts, and recently, CDs. Mayfield still sells framed prints of the photo at art shows.

Clarence and Roscoe, in payment, received a new shotgun and chainsaw and one of Mayfield's framed prints.

A life of fame

The two generally ignored the fame, but in 1988, it stomped through their front door.

Three robbers entered the Jones home, demanding money they believed the men had earned from appearing on the album cover. The robbers ransacked the house. Clarence and Roscoe were bound with wire, brutally beaten and left for dead under a pile of mattresses. A neighbor found them three days later, just days before Christmas.

"It was sub-zero in the house," recalled Tom Martin, who first investigated the crime for the state highway patrol.

Clarence developed pneumonia, and died a few months later. Roscoe, unable to live on his own, moved to a retirement home.

Martin said he kept up with Roscoe in the years after the robbery, inspired by "his resilience and his will to live."

"He was always in a good mood, cheery and upbeat about things. I felt fortunate to know him."

Martin's sentiments were echoed Monday afternoon at Roscoe's graveside funeral services at Nixa's McConnell Cemetery, near Boaz.

"He touched a lot of lives," Lehman noted, looking around at the more than 40 people gathered at the funeral.

Lively chatter about Roscoe's life became quiet as the mourners were invited to pass by the open casket. Roscoe's small body lay inside, in a blue striped shirt and clean pair of overalls.

Women dabbed at their eyes with tissues as a group from Ozark Full Gospel Church performed a harmonious rendition of "Peace In The Valley."

Men in ball caps and work boots shuffled their feet and looked away, eyeing the cattle grazing in green fields beyond the cemetery.

The Rev. James Eakins, from Roscoe's home church, gave a brief simple eulogy.

"Roscoe's life was made up of much hardship," he said. "But what's the beauty of it is he kept a good feeling through all of it. I do appreciate what Roscoe has taught me."

Roscoe died Friday from apparent heart failure. He was buried in a family plot next to his father and mother.

The staff of Century Pines plans to hold a memorial ceremony and plant a tree in honor of Roscoe later this month.

Contact Jenny Fillmer at jfillmer@ News-Leader.com.