BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — The Beale Memorial Library unveiled a set of 10 portraits honoring nine local country-music pioneers Thursday morning.
The artist, Patti Peak Doolittle, who grew up in Bakersfield, permanently gifted her distinctive black-and-white paintings to the county library’s main branch, and a crowd of 100 was on hand to take in the exhibit’s debut — and applaud her donation.
The Beale celebrated Dolittle’s gift with music and speeches by Bakersfield Sound authority Scott B. Bomar, an award-winning author and four-time Grammy nominee; Mike McCoy, director of the Kern County Museum; Di Sharman, Glenda Rankin and Anna Reading of Citizens Preserving History; and the artist herself.
Prizes and giveaways included a historical artifact of note — a glass block from the original Trout’s bar, as well as a copy of Bomar’s 10-CD deluxe box set, The Bakersfield Sound: Country Music Capital of the West, 1940-1974.
Nineteen years ago, Doolittle undertook her daunting labor of love: Immortalizing some of the great Bakersfield Sound performers of her younger days. And flying out from Florida to see them now was emotional for her.
“It made me cry, it still does. Anyway, it’s beautiful. I thought my mother and my father and my sister would be so proud.”
She started and completed the project in 2007. First, she painted Cousin Herb Henson — in acrylic, sparingly administered, on a huge, 84-by-48 canvas. Then, using the same dimensions and techniques, Red Simpson. Then Buck Owens, followed by a much younger Buck Owens, then Merle Haggard, Billy Mize, Bill Woods, Tommy Collins, Lewis Talley and Bonnie Owens. A year later, Doolittle had painted 10 portraits of nine individuals.
And now, after a somewhat torturous and prolonged journey of 13,000 miles back and forth across the country, they are back in Bakersfield for good.
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Bomar said preservation of the portraits is huge.
“You know, music history is the kind of thing that has to be nurtured,” he said, “and we have to keep telling stories and we have to keep these things in the limelight, so having portraits like this is having something that reminds us who these people were and why they mattered, and so having visual art that connects to musical art is just another way to keep that musical art alive.”
A concert followed the presentation of “Legends of the Bakersfield Sound: Portraits in Black and White.” Attendees enjoyed Rainbow Stew — or a recipe card for it, anyway — and bottles of Bubble Up. If you get the reference, you were probably at the unveiling. (The soft drink Bubble Up is mentioned in the Merle Haggard song, “Rainbow Stew.”)
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