Every barbecue mecca, roadside pit and backyard cookout claims fame through flavor and savor, zest and tang springing from tomatoes, mustards, vinegar, assorted spices and an always-secret ingredient or two, whether buried in a pit, dry-rubbed and hickory smoked, or deep-basted and cooked low and slow.

All barbecue lures with taste, but Dreamland added a face.

The beaming mug of John "Big Daddy" Bishop adorns countless T-shirts, sauce jars, hats, mugs, basting brushes, gift boxes, billboards, signage and just about any- and everything associated with the business he envisioned originally as a neighborhood cafe, offering cheeseburgers, fried fish, ribs, sandwiches and more. Though Bishop and wife Lillie, by family accounts the real cook, both died in 1997, their story continues to resonate.

It wasn't just flavors, but the family tale, and the fame that rode along with it, influencing the selection of Bishop to this year's class of Barbecue Hall of Fame members. His name joins fellow inductees C.B. Stubblefield, of Stubb's Bar-B-Q, from Lubbock and Austin, Texas; and Wayne Monk, of Lexington Barbecue, Lexington, N.C., at a ceremony Sept. 14, during the American Royal World Series of Barbecue at the Kansas Speedway in Kansas City. Previous inductees include luminaries diverse as Henry Ford, Guy Fieri and multiple grand-championship winner Chris Lilly.

"When I heard that, that made my day," said Jeanette Bishop-Hall, daughter of the founders. "That was really something. If he was here, he would be overjoyed."

Bishop's God-denominated vision lives on in the south Tuscaloosa neighborhood of Jerusalem Heights, where he built not only that first restaurant, but also homes for his family. Following explosive growth in the '80s fueled partly by sports-media attention, Dreamland and Big Daddy's face now shine from nine other standalone versions throughout the South, at stadiums including Bryant-Denny, and in the palate-memories of everyone who's drooled over the world-famous ribs, said by a long-ago patron to "make your tongue want to slap your brains out."

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It's hardly the first national recognition for 60-plus-year-old Dreamland, one of the inaugural members of the Alabama Barbecue Hall of Fame, lauded from Forbes to USA Today to Southern Living to The New York Times as one of the most distinctive flavors in a field overripe with variations, boasts and claims.

But this particular honor points specifically to John Bishop Sr., and history behind the humble-appearing, now-legendary rib shack, planted in a hand-built spot originally outside the city proper, on a hill teeming with pine, far from other commerce. That original location still stands, not much altered by time, save for the addition of air-conditioning, more signed photos from celebrity guests, framed copies of various periodicals' praises and awards, and a varied array of merchandising emblazoned with the often-crimson Big Daddy logo, his genial visage topped by a simple white cap, pipe cocked off to one side. License plates, signed dollar bills and Bishop's infamous warning signs — No Profanity, No Dancing, No Farting — continue to adorn the walls, and a pot-bellied stove still squats at the far corner from the entrance.

And the stories aren't just found on the walls.

"You'll be hard-pressed to find any other company that knows its history as well as our employees do," said Jonathan Bird, directing of marketing for Dreamland. "The dishwashers, the servers, everyone knows about Mr. Bishop and his family, as it relates to Southern food culture, and Alabama. It's really cool that story's going to be told by his induction into the Hall of Fame."

Greg Rempe, host of the BBQ Central Show, which first made the Hall of Fame inductee announcement, noted that while Memphis, Kansas City, Texas and the Carolinas are typically thought of as the meccas, Alabama's claims to barbecue fame continue to grow.

"I think people want to maybe put Alabama in a region," Rempe said. "And when you talk about Alabama barbecue, there are two names that always come up: Big Bob Gibson in Decatur, and Big Daddy at Dreamland."

Barbecue Hall of Fame inductees come from yearlong lists of nominations, studied and scaled down by a nominating committee, said Emily Park, manager of the American Royal, a Kansas nonprofit founded in 1899 that sponsors livestock, rodeo and horse shows, in addition to its World Series of Barbecue, the group's biggest fundraiser. The hall's just six years old, and inducts three new members yearly, including not only pitmasters and business owners but also writers about barbecue, media personalities and more.

"This year we had about 85 nominations, including 50 unique ones," Park said. The nominating team asks how the person has impacted the world of barbecue: "Are they changing the landscape?"

Though Dreamland's reputation preceded, the committee delved more into its history.

"Although we knew about Dreamland, it's not really in our backyard, so it was great to learn more," Park said. "(Bishop) specifically, I think what was kind of unique to him was his story ... how he started this restaurant from the ground up, and turned it into this mega-house, the scope of it. He believed in his dream, and made it into his whole life, and his future family's life.

"We've all talked about Dreamland, how that becomes the destination more than the city, the sought-after place."

The induction ceremony will take place on a busy weekend, featuring 500 competing teams from around the world, Park said. Jeanette plans to represent her late father, and brother John may come as well, to take part in the black-apron ceremony, akin to the Master's green jackets. Though the Hall of Fame doesn't yet have a permanent bricks-and-mortar location, the American Royal's in the process of moving to a new home, so Dreamland artifacts may someday reside there.

God whispers

Dreamland was built from ground up by a brickmason who wanted another way to earn his daily bread, envisioning originally a cafe and mortuary.

"My mother told him, 'If you do that, I can't do it!' 'But you'd make money both ways!' 'I can't do it!,'" Jeanette said, laughing.

One day, walking grounds he'd purchased, upset because Miss Lillie didn't share his vision for the funeral home, "He kept asking, 'God, I don't know why I brought this property,' " Jeanette said, recounting a story her father loved to share.

"He said God whispered in his ear to name the place Dreamland. He went and told Mom, and she wrote it down."

Whenever Bishop would retell that tale, and he enjoyed doing so, often, he'd tear up.

"And my Daddy was not a crying man," she said, "but it's like he went back to that time. 'God told me to name it Dreamland.'

"But just a cafe. No funeral home."

Following instruction, the Bishops opened Dreamland in 1958, the same year another Tuscaloosa legend arose, as Paul W. "Bear" Bryant answered mama's call for the head football coaching job at the University of Alabama. The Bear struggled a few seasons before catching fire, establishing the Crimson Tide's dominance, winning national championships and, eventually, more games than anyone. Dreamland, meanwhile, took a bit longer to gain such prominence. While Jeanette and her brother John Jr. were still in school, the cafe cooked along with solid lunch crowds, and pretty good weekends. John Sr. continued working his day job, while Miss Lillie mostly took care of the cafe during daytimes.

"What people didn't know," Jeanette said, laughing, "Daddy couldn't cook worth a damn. He'd work in the back pit, burn everything up, so we'd throw it out.

"My mom, that's who it was. She taught all of us how to cook."

All were living behind Dreamland, where John Sr. had built houses, so they'd get up mornings, start the fire going in the pit, and eat breakfast, sometimes potato chips and a Coke. John Sr. would ask his children just one question: Have you done your homework?

"The reason he'd ask, he'd say 'I'm smart, but I want you to be smarter than me,' " Jeanette said.

The kids worked at the family business after school hours, but following graduation, went their own ways, John Jr. to California, Jeanette to Pittsburgh. John Jr. returned first, in the '80s, as word-of-mouth had begun to buzz. Perhaps remembering his father's admonition to grow smarter, John Jr. befriended the new coach who'd succeeded the Bear, Ray Perkins, and invited him out to his family's little barbecue place. Coach Perkins not only became a regular, but began bringing teams, talking Dreamland up to media who'd descend on game days.

"That's how it all got started, to tell you the truth," Jeanette said. She moved back to Tuscaloosa, and the business, in 1987. What had been a neighborhood joint, its customers 99 percent black, mostly from homes around the cafe, was rapidly becoming a nationally known phenomenon. Not just teams, not just the city, but visitors from everywhere, media personalities, other coaches and teams, began finding their way to Dreamland. Soon as tongues rolled back from brains, they talked it up.

"At the time I'd left home, there was no white traffic. By the time I moved back, there was hardly no BLACK traffic," she said, laughing.

Big Daddy's atmosphere

Though Miss Lillie remained the secret heart of flavors, the public side, the overall outlook of the place, that was Big Daddy's joint.

"He set the atmosphere," she said. "My daddy did not allow no bad talking."

Even with opposing teams and fans piling in together on game days, Bishop kept large communal tables. He began posting those signs, about no profanity and so on. Many were originally hand-printed, on paper, but vandals kept stealing them for souvenirs, so Bishop reprinted them in hard plastic, the better to affix them to walls.

" 'You're not going to badmouth nobody; everybody is going to eat together.' By him not allowing no mess when they'd come up in there, it was just so loving," Jeanette said. If he saw parents trying to corral children, he'd say "Let them kids run. That's what they supposed to do.' "

Their success shocked the whole family, Jeanette not least.

"I asked Daddy, 'When did it get like this?' He said, 'They just love me more, Jeanette,' " she said, laughing.

So when Jeanette sat down with attorneys, working to capitalize on the Dreamland name and fame, the logo idea came to her naturally: "Why not use Daddy's face?"

After first copies of the logo arrived, wrapped around jars of sauce, John Sr. held one up, admiringly, and said "I told y'all I was pretty." Miss Lillie was perfectly happy with John Sr. being the face. She didn't like talking to reporters; her husband reveled in attention.

"She didn't wanna take no pictures. 'Let your Daddy have it.' She would get mad; we hardly had any pictures of her," Jeanette said.

When a billboard lit up by John Sr.'s face went up on the highway, people started calling Jeanette, telling her to come get her daddy: Something was wrong. John Sr. had pulled up alongside the highway in his station wagon, and was just sitting and staring. She pulled up behind, knocked on the car window.

"I said 'What the hell is wrong with you?' " she said, laughing. "He said 'Ain't nothing wrong with me. You ain't up that high.' "

Although he didn't cry much, Big Daddy would sometimes burst into tears, wondering at how his dream had grown, become not only known, and successful, but famous and beloved.

"He was not a crier, but he was so proud."

Jeanette's still trying to talk her brother into joining her at the ceremony.

"John, since he's gotten older, he's gotten a lot of Daddy's little ways. He really looks like Daddy now," she said. "I was telling John, 'You should do it. You should really go.'

"He was grumbling, so he got that from Daddy."

For more on the honor, the American Royal and World Series of Barbecue, see www.barbecuehalloffame.com.