I’d love to tell you some of Dad’s history in the legendary Springfield music scene. After the Ozarks Jubilee ceased broadcasting, many performers made their exodus to Nashville, but here in Springfield there remained a plethora of talented and energized musicians, including but certainly not limited to, Slim Wilson, Speedy Haworth, Harold Morrison, Jimmy Gately (Harold and Jimmy eventually moved to Nashville), Paul Mitchell, the Luttrell brothers (Jim, Bill and Wendy), Al Brumley, Jr., Lloyd Presley, Roger Blevins, Doc Martin, Cliff Bruner, Terry Gott, Chuck Bowers, and Stan Hitchcock. Shows were held in really cool places like Fantastic Caverns and square dances were held next to the swimming pool and skating rink at Doling Park. Later in Dad’s life, when I was a little girl, I remember thinking he was a giant star because these music legends would come over and say hello and pull a chair up to our booth at Aunt Martha’s Pancake House and “talk shop” while I was scarfing down peanut butter pancakes with a twice-baked potato on the side. When I pay attention and watch the working relationships and friendships of Springfield’s current music community, it takes my mind back to those times I heard about, and I figure that much probably hasn’t changed… just the names.
Dad and local musicians would gather for jams and recording sessions, some of which took place in a mid-city recording studio set up in the garage of Virgil Williams. Several demo recordings came out of those collaborations, resulting in more than a handful of Johnny Mullins songs being recorded on 45 rpm records, all of them with their own Ozark flair. A couple examples are songs by The Ozark Playboys such as “Angel in the Hills” –
“She’s my darlin rose, the flower of my heart. I found her here amongst the rocks and rills. If anyone should ask you where I’ve been, just say I’m with an angel in the hills.”
And “Don’t Look at Me” –
“What dirty dog stole my gal away? (Don’t look at me!) She up and left without a word to say. (Don’t look at me!) If there’s any one thing I can’t stand in this world, it’s a fella that trifles with another man’s girl!. What dirty dog stole my gal away? (Don’t look at me!)”
This song currently receives national attention while being performed by The Hillbenders who tour the festival and theatre circuit rounds, enticing audiences to sing along, and boy oh boy, do they! It’s fun and Dad would absolutely love the joy it brings.
After the Grammy’s, Dad’s South Side Station post office box was always stuffed full of cards and letters, and the rotary dial phone in the hallway rang off the hook. Some of the letters in the mail were from Emmylou Harris, with whom Johnny enjoyed a friendship throughout the remainder of his songwriting career before being diagnosed with Alzheimers disease in the late 1990’s. Other inquiries and calls were from magazines, TV shows, radio, newspapers and aspiring writers. He started performing on radio shows such as KTTS and KWTO in Springfield, MO, KRMO in Monett, MO, and all the way as far as KCTT in Yellville, Arkansas. He was interviewed and written up in People magazine, US magazine, National Enquirer, and the Star, and was invited to be on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, but that didn’t pan out. He was a guest on the Whad’Ya Know? Show with Michael Feldman twice, performed at banquets, regional community groups and clubs, churches, the Ozark House Concert Series, and his final performance was at the Landers Theatre in the winter of 1996. In 1986, “America’s Favorite Janitor,” a Johnny Mullins “life story novel” written by Heno Head, Jr, was published complete with a foreword written by Emmylou Harris and cover endorsements by Bill Anderson, Glen Campbell and Tom T. Hall.
Growing up, I took for granted how lucky I was to be surrounded by Dad’s constant songwriting. And it was constant. No matter where we were, if he got an idea for a song, you had to stop everything while he took out a pen and wrote that idea down on whatever was available. Sometimes that “whatever” was a napkin, sometimes a gum wrapper, and many times a brown paper towel from the janitor’s closet at Wilder Elementary where he penned many a tune between sweeping floors, cleaning windows, mowing the grounds, and repairing broken desks.
The students always considered themselves lucky when he would pull out his guitar and entertain them with a song. I still have people come up and tell me their remembrances about “Mr. Mullins, my janitor.” He was beloved for his quiet, humorous, unassuming ways, and had served as a counselor, mentor, and friend to hundreds of children who passed through those hallways. Johnny came up with a lot of games for the school kids that were actually ways of having them help him collect chairs and tables from the cafeteria, or push carts into the storage room. He was as smart as a fox, and the teachers appreciated him, too, as they would use him as a tool to get kids to behave or else they couldn’t go hear Mr. Mullins sing. When people asked why he never moved to Nashville to pursue a writing career, he said that he loved the Ozarks and didn’t want to move his family away, but also because he would miss “his kids” at school.
Dad was always generous in sharing songs that he had written in his study. I recall many eager moments sitting on the floor in that tiny room waiting for him to thread the reel-to-reel and give a new song a listen. He always wanted honest feedback, and Mom was more honest than Sharon and I were. We loved everything he did, but sometimes if a song was a stinker, she’d say, “Get back to writing, Johnny!” After I moved out of the house, Dad always brought me over cassette tapes of his songs, either newly written or sometimes something old that he had transferred to new-fangled cassette from the reel-to-reel machine. Most of these tapes ended up in what I now call “the shoebox collection.” Boy, am I ever grateful for those dusty old shoeboxes! Continued in Part 4…..
