Men From Earth

Roscoe Jones was born on Christmas Day in 1923. He lived an incredibly simple life with his father Clarence on a 40-acre farm near Boaz, doing odd jobs and taking hay or grain as trade instead of money to Nixa or Clever well into the 1980s.

But back in the 70s, an upstart rock/country group moved just down the road from the uninsulated cabin-The Ozark Mountain Daredevils. The two would come by the Daredevils practice sessions often, founding member Larry Lee recalls, curious about the noise.

"I remember driving to rehearsals and seeing Roscoe and Clarence driving their mules and wagons," Lee says. "One day (band member) Steve Cash gave Roscoe a harp, which I think he cherished. We would always see him pretending to play it, or maybe he really was, but he was always so quiet that you would never know. He never spoke."

One day the band asked if they could take some pictures of their mules. After a few shots, Roscoe asked if they could be in the picture. The photo became the cover for the Daredevils "Men from Earth" album and was plastered on tens of thousands of T-shirts, records and posters.

The two never paid much attention to the fame until 1988, when it crashed through their door. Three robbers ransacked the cabin and bound Roscoe and Clarence with wire. They believed the men received a lot of money for their cover shot, when their payment had actually been a new shotgun, a chainsaw and a framed print of their photo.

"That's all they said they wanted," Lee recalls. "We had mentioned something to them about money, but all they said they needed was a new shotgun and chainsaw." Roscoe and Clarence were found three days later, almost Christmas Day, still bound. Clarence died a few days later after developing pneumonia. Roscoe survived, living in an Ozark retirement home until Nov. 18, 2003. He was 79-years-old.