It all started when several 6-foot-tall black-and-white portraits of Bakersfield Sound legends like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard went missing following the surprise closure of Trout’s Oildale honky-tonk in 2017.
But on Thursday, the mural-size portraits, long since recovered and restored, found a permanent home at the Beale Memorial Library in downtown Bakersfield, and more than 100 people showed up to celebrate this lost-and-found story.
The 10 paintings by former Bakersfield artist Patti Peak Doolittle had disappeared without a trace with the closure of Trout’s. The building went through foreclosure and languished for years.
It was destroyed by fire in April 2022, one month after Thomas Rockwell, who had operated the bar for years, was sentenced in Tuolumne County for stealing thousands of dollars from his elderly, disabled uncle.
The 10 original mural-size portraits of heroes of the Bakersfield Sound, portraits that had been loaned to Rockwell by Doolittle, appeared to be lost forever.
But Doolittle did see the portraits again — in 2023 when friends from Kern County drove the recovered artwork all the way from Bakersfield to Florida, where the artist had moved.
“It was like getting my children back,” she told The Californian at the time.
Local resident Anna Reading-Carey was among the Bakersfield contingent that helped recover the paintings after one of her contacts in the Sonora area let her know that the artwork had been found in a dusty garage.
Di Sharman, co-founder of Citizens Preserving History, a nonprofit that spearheaded the effort to move country music icon Merle Haggard’s childhood boxcar home from Oildale to the Kern County Museum, helped retrieve the paintings from Tuolumne County, and along with her husband, Mark, delivered all 10 portraits to Doolittle on the East Coast.
The paintings had been through a lot. Some have small tears in the canvas.
Fortunately, Doolittle’s artist husband, Marvin Steel, also happened to be a professional painting restorationist, and he volunteered to restore all the paintings before Doolittle donated them to Citizens Preserving History in the hope that they could find a place where the art could be seen and enjoyed.
That place turned out to be the Beale Memorial Library in downtown Bakersfield, and on Thursday, many showed up to celebrate the opening of the Legends of the Bakersfield Sound portraits exhibit.
“Today it is my honor to speak in recognition of the opening of the Legends of the Bakersfield Sound: Portraits in Black and White exhibit at the Beale Memorial Library,” said Andie Sullivan, director of libraries.
“The Bakersfield Sound is more than a genre of music,” she said, “but I’m preaching to the choir, so I probably don’t need to say that again.
“It is a defining part of Kern County’s identity,” Sullivan said, “formed from hard work, grit and originality, this uniquely American sound carried the stories of working people from the fields and the oil towns of the Central Valley, onto the national stages and into music history.
“Its influence continues to shape country music today and remains a source of pride for local residents,” she said.
Scott B. Bomar, a four-time Grammy-nominated writer, researcher and music historian, also spoke at the exhibit dedication ceremony.
“On July 27, 1953, the Korean armistice agreement was signed, bringing an end to the Korean War,” Bomar said. “And just two days earlier, a modern war themed country ballad called ‘A Dear John Letter,’ debuted on Billboard magazine’s national airplay ranking of top country and western records.
“Sung by Gene Shepard with a recitation by Ferlin Husky, it became the first national No. 1 country hit to feature primarily Bakersfield musicians.”
Bomar went on to describe connections and coincidences that brought Husky to Bakersfield and created strings and connecting points between band leader Bill Woods and lots of Bakersfield artists, including several who are featured in the portraits, including Tommy Collins, Buck Owens, Haggard, Bonnie Owens and Red Simpson.
Di Sharman, who co-founded Citizens Preserving History with her sister, Glenda Rankin, helped lead the effort to locate the lost portraits — and to have the paintings repaired and restored in Florida and returned to Bakersfield.
“Citizens Preserving History, she told the crowd, “has traveled over 13,000 miles to get these babies back home,” Sharman said of the portraits.
The second hour of Thursday’s opening featured some of Bakersfield’s top musicians and singers on stage.
Singer-songwriter-musician Ernie Lewis not only performed with several other fellow artists at Thursday’s “Legends” event, he helped organize it.
But the number of “name” musicians onstage were many, too many to name here.
One steel guitar player Norm Hamlet performed 49 years with Merle Haggard and the Strangers.
How’s that for a legend.