Eladixxblogger: Buck Owens and The Buckaroos
It seems like everybody has different opinions on Buck's music. I spent every summer, listening to Buck, Brenda Lee, (Too Much Water Went Under the Bridge,) and Stonewall Jackson. Funny thing about Stonewall Jackson, was that he made his first guitar and learned to play it. If I remember right, Jackson was left handed. 97% of guitars made are for right handed people.
It is often easier for a left handed guitar play, to use his right hand and make it his dominant hand for the guitar, only. Our daughter, who is a professional piano player, is left handed dominant on some things, but uses her right hand as dominant in other areas. Her name is Holli and she has her own Tutoring classes, in a music store in Lawton, Oklahoma. Holli is very, musically talented, more so than I am.
She can read the music, play Bach or Beetoven, or just play Gospel Music with a lot of serious improvisation. That means, that she can add more to a song, than what is written on the sheet music. By the way, Nashville uses a number system, when they are playing sessions music. A good google hunt would be "Nashville+Music Number System. That really helps a Country Singer like Freddy Hart, who only can read on the 3rd or 4th grade level.
Now, this is a long Bio that I took from one of the pages on the Net. Instead of struggling with moving from page to page, you can use this and read it all the way through. I have not edited the post, because it really is well written.
From Buck's Bio pages on the Internet. May be just from CMT, which stands for Country Music Television Network.
You can use your computer to make the words bigger. I do that all the time and it makes for a better read.
Buck Owens' relation to Oklahoma's Mathis Brothers Furniture and the old, WKY Television Station, which is called KFOR.TV. Take your time reading it, and see if you can spot some things that set Buck Owens as creative and progressive Country Music Star.
"Buck Owens 5, first national TV appearances came in 1963 and 1964, with several guest spots on both ABC's Jimmy Dean Show and NBC's Kraft Music Hall. He first ventured into his own nationwide TV series in 1966. His friends Bud and Don Mathis, owners of Mathis Brothers Furniture in Oklahoma City, asked him to host a half-hour TV show. The show, to run 52 weeks a year, would be sponsored locally by Mathis.
Buck saw an opportunity to expand his horizons by having the shows nationally syndicated, and at its peak, Buck Owens' Ranch ran in 100 markets. Four times a year, Buck taped a dozen or more shows on a set he had built at WKY in Oklahoma City. During the first few years, the shows were performed live and taped each segment, between commercial breaks were done without stopping or editing!
In later years Buck brought his son Mike in to help, and they started editing the shows together after the songs were taped. Mike eventually became the shows' announcer, and Buck's older son, Buddy also performed on the show as Buddy Alan. Old and new fans alike will be delighted to see and hear Buck Owens and his Buckaroos perform the music that made him one of the biggest names in country music and the originator and father of the Bakersfield Sound.
Top artists taped a dozen or more performances at WKY (KFOR) in Oklahoma City, which were patched into the shows by Buck and his son Mike, who doubled as the show's announcer. Among the regulars were eldest son Buddy, who performed as "Buddy Alan," and Oregon-bred vocalist Susan Raye, who began working with Buck's shows in 1964, 1966 and 1967 were banner years for #1 Buck Owens records as tallied by Billboard.
Most of his songs were in the "freight train" style, and they continued in a steady stream. Late in 1967, his "thank you" to the fans "It Takes People Like You (To Make People Like Me)" reached #2. He began experimenting musically in 1968 pulling away from the "freight train" sound. "How Long Will My Baby Be Gone" was conventional enough; the ballad "Sweet Rosie Jones" was a bit more dramatic. "I've Got You On My Mind Again," which made it to #5, was a greater departure, its R&B feel unlike anything he'd previously recorded. However, his success continued.
On Saturday March 30, 1968, Buck and The Buckaroos played for Lyndon Johnson and an enthusiastic audience at the White House. They were among the first to know that the next night Johnson would announce his decision not to seek re-election. An LP of the performance appeared in1972. Buck's fan club was massive. The Buck Owens "All American" Fan Club published a regular magazine, and the merchandising even extended to a Buck Owens Guitar Method book, a guitar instruction record by Buck, and a Buck Owens' guitar chord book. He even had an offer that year from some Canadian TV producers to star in a pilot of a Country Music TV variety/comedy program.
No longer performing on other promoters' package shows, Buck headlined his own from 1966 to 1970; and it was a formidable one at that. Featured were Susan Raye and 1950s country star Freddie Hart, along with Tommy Collins, Sheb Wooley, and Rose and Cal Maddox of the Maddox Brothers & Rose (Buck had recorded two hit duets with Rose in 1961). It was easy and profitable for all concerned.
"You have a complete package," explains Buck, "and you don't have to book anyone else with the show. The other singers got the money from me, so they always got their money."
While OMAC simply booked Collins and Maddox, Buck also plunged head-first into efforts to develop new young talents. Freddie Hart, Susan Raye, Tony Booth, Buddy Alan, and many of the other artists Buck worked with were managed by Performance Management, founded by Buck and Jack McFadden. In March 1969, Buck opened Buck Owens Studios in an old movie theater in downtown Bakersfield. It featured 16-track recording equipment and a then-new, Moog synthesizer.
The media began referring to Bakersfield as "Buckersfield," a term Buck himself never used. Buck's stature with Capitol permitted him extraordinary clout. A deal between Capitol and Buck Owens Productions allowed Buck to record himself, Tony Booth, Freddie Hart, Buddy Alan, The Buckaroos, Susan Raye, and others in his Bakersfield studios. Capitol merely packaged and released the recordings. No country singer at that time had a similar deal.
Among the other aspiring singers Buck discovered were longhaired twin brothers, Jim and John Hager, who were also signed to Capitol. Few country entertainers played San Francisco's legendary Fillmore Auditorium, the premier rock concert hall in America in the late '60s. Buck played there October 11 and 12, 1968. Many country singers, hostile to the music and youth of the time, would have refused such an engagement. Buck would not. Conversely, his music, along with that of Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard (despite his anti-hippie hit "Okie From Muskogee") were admired by young people and rock musicians.
Ironically, in 1969 Buck's desire to experiment beyond the "freight train" sound grew with numbers like the waltz-tempo "Who's Gonna Mow Your Grass," which boasted rock-style fuzz-tone guitar, and, "Tall Dark Stranger." Both reached #1. Rolling Stone, the San Francisco-based rock music publication that had run a story on Merle Haggard a year earlier, ran a lengthy piece on California Country Music in their June 28, 1969 issue. Written by John Grissim Jr., it profiled everyone from Glen Campbell and Ken Nelson to John Hartford and Judy Lynn. Buck, however, was the main focus.
Though the story was plagued by factual errors, Grissim explored Owens' popularity and extensive business holdings in detail, and later expanded the article into a full-length book: Country Music: White Man's Blues, covering the country scene nationwide. Eventually, aside from Buddy Alan, Susan Raye, the Haggers, and a few others, Buck abandoned his efforts to develop new talent. Without naming names, he explains that many lacked the all- powerful drive to succeed - the drive of, say, a Buck Owens. Buck explains his views thusly: "Lady Limelight is a jealous lady. She wants all of your attention. You don't have any time to think of anything else but Lady Limelight, because pretty soon that light will be shinning on somebody else. So you better do it while you can. I wanted it for these people a hell of a lot worse than they wanted it."
Canadian TV producers Frank Peppiatt and John Aylesworth had conceived Hee Haw, named for its cartoon donkey mascot, as a Country Music version of NBC's popular Laugh-In, that would mix quick-cut, cornball humor with country music. Buck taped the pilot in 1968, and CBS picked it up as a summer replacement for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, canceled due to its controversial anti-war humor during the Vietnam years. CBS picked up a 13 -show option, and at Buck's recommendation the producers hired singer Roy Clark as co-host.
The show premiered Sunday, June 15, 1969. Hee Haw was so successful during the summer that CBS slotted it into the fall schedule. The Buckaroos served as the house band, and Buck was suddenly getting national exposure on a weekly basis. With him came the top talents in his stable: Buddy Alan, Susan Raye, and the Haggers. This was the summer I was at Oklahoma State University, and you couldn't find a seat in front of the TV, when it came Hee Haw time.
In 1966 Buck and The Buckaroos had their instruments painted red, white and blue, an extension of Buck's innate patriotism. When these instruments were seen on Hee Haw, guitar manufacturers began making offers to him to market a guitar in those colors. Though Buck used a red, white and blue acoustic guitar built for him by Semie Moseley of Mosrite Guitars, his business sense told him an expensive model of that type would not sell to the public. He finally licensed Chicago Musical Instruments (makers of the prestigious Gibson guitars) to market a $99 acoustic model, and received a $2.50 royalty on each sold. He knew that Sears would market them but had no idea they would sell as well as they did --until the first royalty check came.
"The very first statement, they sent me $15,000," he laughs. "I said, Oh, you mean THAT Sears!"
During this time, Buck was also filming what may be the first Country Music videos ever done. He did four tied to his hit singles "Tall Dark Stranger," Sweet Rosie Jones," "Big in Vegas" and "I Would'nt Live in New York City (If They Gave Me The Whole Dang Town)." Great songs. Get Prof Cec to download the New York City one ad Sweet Josie Brown.
Filmed in 35 millimeter, they were rarely seen, since there was no outlets for playing videos then and cable TV networks did'nt yet exist. With Buck Owens now a national TV star, Capitol flooded the market with nine LPs between December 1969 and February 1971. Three were reissues of earlier albums, along with a new gospel album, a live album, three new Buck studio albums, and a Christmas LP. One promotion man complained to the label that they were releasing more Buck product than he could ever promote.
In 1971, Buck signed his final four-year contract with Capitol. Following lengthy negotiations, the label gave him something few artists ever received: Ownership of all his Capitol recordings at the end of the contract. He would give the label five years to sell off his albums before he would take ownership in 1980. Such business acumen was routine for Buck and still a rarity at the time among country singers.
As Dorothy Owens says, "Buck's a very bright person. He thinks all the time, and he thinks ahead. Buck's a good business person, always thinking to the future and What if? He was always saying that. He invested his money, and he didn't waste it. He didn't spend it on high living. He's very comfortable with a moderate way of life."
Buck continued to diversify musically. He followed his 1971 hit recording of Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge over Troubled Water" with an LP featuring two more Simon and Garfunkel songs and numbers by folk-rockers Donovan and Bob Dylan. It disturbed Ken Nelson.
"The last two years of recording," said Nelson, "Buck tried to get too hep and that is the one thing that I didn't approve of, and I told him that, too. He was trying to bring his music up to date, to what he thought was progressive, but if you're not yourself, it's no good."
Thinking back, Buck recalls these musical departures quite differently: "I got to realizing that I wanted to record, I wanted to experiment. And doing those same old songs the same old way--I said, "I think it's time for me to have some fun. And so we got into those things, and we had quite a bit fun with them too."
CBS dropped Hee Haw in 1971 as the network ended a decade of rural oriented programming, but in syndication the show was more successful than it had ever been with CBS. Buck shifted musical directions again in 1971, adding five string banjoist Ronnie Jackson to the Buckaroos and recording two hit bluegrass numbers: The Osborne Brothers, "Ruby (Are You Mad)" and "Rollin' In My Sweet Baby's Arms."
However, in 1972, with the more conventional ballad "Made In Japan," Buck Owens had his final #1 solo recording. Through 1972 and 1973 he toured, taped Hee Haw twice a year and worked in his studio. His recording career was in decline, his hits being novelties like "Big Game Hunter" and "On the Cover Of The Music City News." Hee Haw's success in syndication led to the demise of Buck Owens' Ranch in 1973. In certain markets, TV stations programmed Buck's Show against Hee Haw, whose producers arranged with Buck to end his show.
Buck still owns all 400 Ranch Shows. It had been a fantastic run -- a decade of unprecedented success. Then one summer morning, Buck Owens suffered a sudden, tragic blow from which it took him years to recover.
At 6:30 on the morning of July 17, 1974, Buck's home phone rang. It was his son Michael, who managed KUZZ. He informed him that Don Rich had been killed earlier that evening when his motorcycle struck a highway divider.
"He said , 'Dad, I have to tell you something.' And then he told me about Don. It was something that I always wanted to forget and never to remember...and I had to call his wife and tell her --she was in Morro Bay."
Several of Buck's musicians had bought motorcycles, and when other friends of theirs died in motorcycle mishaps, Buck repeatedly preached against them. Don promised Buck he'd never ride his only on dirt trails. That night he was working late at Buck's studio, planning to travel to Morro Bay to meet his wife and kids for some deep-sea fishing. He was heading from Bakersfield to Morro Bay on his bike when the accident occurred.
Buck was shattered. The alter-ego, the musical son who had blossomed under his wing, whom he depended on both in the studio and onstage, was suddenly gone. A huge void remained in Buck's life and music and in his soul.
"After Don's death, I don't think I ever quite recovered. I had such a long period of shock and such a long period of being depressed and confused and hurt that I couldn't talk about Don much for at least four, five, six years."
"Don was incredibly important as a human being. He was as much a part of the music as I was. He seemed able to read my mind. And a lotta times I would try to fool him on the stage: we had our little thing going. He was uncanny about catching me so he could sing with me. There was never anything like that happened to me before or since. That's the way I'll always remember him. I finally got at peace with that."
Buck continued with Hee Haw after Don's death, since he only had to tape in Nashville in June and October of each year. And in 1974, Buck was about to depart Capitol after 18 years. His records hadn't been selling, so there was little or no thought of another Capitol contract. In 1975 Andy Wickham of Warner Bros. Records, a long time Buck Owens fan, signed him to Warners.
"I was very comfortable with Andy. He let me do what I wanted to but it just wasn\'d5t there. I couldn't do it by myself. I missed Don so much every place I'd go."
With Norro Wilson producing, Buck recorded in Nashville for the first time, leaving the control to others and concentrating on generic pop-country music. The fire was gone and his fans knew it. Neither his Warner singles nor albums were up to his old standards proven by their low chart positions. Today he's philosophical about his lack of success at Warners.
"It wasn't Norro's or AndyWickham's fault, it was my fault. I didn't want it bad enough to go out and do the job. Because from the day of Don's death, I went through the paces...things were over at that time for me. It never did pick up."
A decade before, Buck Owens had been the top country singer in the nation. Now, with his record sales dragging, Hee Haw was his major outlet. And people began to forget the dynamic honky-tonk singer Buck Owens had been. They saw him as an coverall's -clad comic holding a red, white and blue guitar, standing in a fake cornfield singing "Phfft! You Were Gone" with guest after guest.
Then in his late forties, his artistic frustration was growing. On June 21, 1979, Buck married Jennifer Smith, whom he met in 1967 at the Cotillion Ballroom in Wichita, Kansas, where Buck was playing. She was a college student but they dated from then on. Also in 1979, he had his biggest hit with Warners: "Play Together Again Again," a tribute number that became a duet with long-time Buck admirer Emmy ou Harris and reached #11 in Billboard.
As the '70s ended Buck realized that the unbearable emotional pain had to stop. It was time to let go and get on with living. "I was in a zombie -like mode and I went through the motions up until January 1, 1980. And I knew I couldn't go through that anymore, so I called the guys together. I told 'em , "I'm gonna still play some dates, but I'm not gonna do anything near like I did it before. I can't do that and I don't want to do it."
Several members of the band continued with him in other roles. He and Warners mutually agreed to end his contract. For the first time in 23 years, Buck Owens was no longer recording. He reordered his priorities over the next few years.
"I spent a lot of that time from age 50 to 60 doin' things that I wanted to do. I'm in an absolute frenzy towards doing as many things as I could, so that when I really retired, I would be ready for it. The rest can wait till tomorrow, next week, if I'm around," Buck ended.
"We'll take a look. That's my attitude: to remove any and all stress off myself."
Buck also had time to reflect on his career. Don's loss had been devastating, yet in the end, he realized what truly diminished his appeal as a recording artist was the very thing that made him a household word: "Hee Haw."
" Anybody that's been on television - Perry Como, Jimmy Dean, Andy Williams, Johnny Cash, Buck Owens- when you become a household name, when they can see you once a week, it reduces and diminishes your value. You're no longer special. I think quintessentially, television is the bare bones of the removal of all mystique. Don't forget, in 1969 I was still having #1 records. As I went along it degenerated into more comedy and a lot less singing, or doing those silly little cast songs."
"I enjoyed the Hee Haw people, but from 1980 on I didn't enjoy it and thought about leaving, and thought, hell, it's an easy job and pays wonderfully. I kinda just 'prostituted' myself for their money. My music, which I loved, had suffered badly, and I knew what it was from: too much "Phifft! You Were Gone."
I thought: "One more year, I'll do one more year...,"Buck left Hee Haw in 1986.
It continued, with Roy Clark hosting. "I was always very grateful to them and am grateful to 'em now. I went back a couple of years ago and did their 20th anniversary show. But the longer I stayed on Hee Haw, the worse things got for me musically.
There was no reason to expect any more music from Buck Owens. The same year he cut back his activities, 1980, saw the hit film Urban Cowboy making country music trendy. In Nashville, producers hustled to create easy-listening records smothered in strings to attract pop-record buyers. It seemed that the simpler days of Nudie suits and freight train songs were gone forever.
Like other California artists, Buck had many friends in Nashville but never considered moving there, even at his peak. He loathed its politics, and Music Row's tendency to minimize the contributions of West Coast artists.
"The beef I had with Nashville was they thought they spoke for all country performers and that just wasn't true. It seemed they never wanted to give the West Coast musicians the credit we deserved. A lot of things that came out of the West Coast - not necessarily by me, but by country people here - Nashville took and applied. I was at odds with them right from the beginning; Merle came along, and he was at odds with them. They wanted to control what we did on the West Coast, I felt. "I'm from the Bob Wills and the Little Richard school of music. Bob Wills did what the hell he thought; Little Richard did what he thought, and those were my big influences. I didn't like the music in Nashville: soft, easy, sweet recordings, and then they pour a gallon of maple syrup over it...so contrived. I disliked the fact that musicians who had their own bands could not record with their bands. Nashville producers wouldn't let them."
"I'm not going to beg and compromise what I believe in just because somebody in Nashville don't approve. Screw that. I am who I am, I am what I am, I do what I do, and I ain't never gonna do it any different. I don't care who likes it and who don't."
Still, Buck was not a disinterested observer.
"I never expected to record again. I knew I had done everything I ever wanted to do. I was satisfied. But...all the time I'm watching the Country Music horizon. And I'm sayin' "Lord, is there anybody gonna come?'"
A backlash against Nashville's pop-country excesses was brewing even while the Urban Cowboy fad was peaking. Early '80s hits by young, solidly traditional singers like Ricky Skaggs, John Anderson, and George Strait were the vanguard.
On September 17, 1985, a front page New York Times story discussed the panic on Nashville's Music Row, as country record sales plummeted. The story pointed out the public's weariness with sound-alike pop-country records and the over-emphasis on recording songs designed primarily to please radio programmers.
A slew of younger performers followed Anderson, Strait, and Skaggs. Some were the young people who grew up in the '60s with The Beatles and Rolling Stones, who also saw integrity and soul in the music of George Jones, Johnny Cash, Lefty Frizzell, Hank Williams Sr., Buck Owens, and Merle Haggard. By the mid-80's some of these young people like Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakum, Ricky Van Shelton, and others, began to wipe away the maple syrup in Nashville.
Kentucky-born, Ohio-bred Yoakum had been rejected as "too country" when he went to Nashville in search of a recording contract. He gained his following in Los Angeles among young fans who loved rockabilly, hard country and New Wave Rock. Yoakum got a recording contract with Reprise and in the spring of 1986 had his first hit with a driving, stops-out revival of Johnny Horton's 1956 hit "Honky-Tonk Man."
Buck heard Dwight singing "Honky-Tonk Man." Then KUZZ program Director Evan Bridwell told him that a Buck revival seemed to be brewing.
"People would be sending me interviews from newspapers where they interviewed Dwight; I kept seeing these things, and he would say, "All you guys forgot about Buck Owens. Do you know who Buck Owens is?"
Then all of a sudden he releases a song called "Little Ways," sounded exactly like me. It started taking off here.
"Yoakum and other New Traditional performers gave Buck Owens a hope that though his career had wound down, his music was in caring hands. After Buck met Dwight and they performed at the fair in 1987, the two stayed in touch and sang Buck's 1972 recording of "Streets Of Bakersfield" together on a 1988 CBS-TV special.
Buck toured with Dwight that summer and for the first time in years, audiences saw Buck Owens not as the former star of Hee Haw, but in his true role as a master hard-country and honky-tonk singer.
"I played dates with Dwight in Memphis and Atlanta, and Dwight would say, "Well you kinda gettin' the bug; think you're gonna record now? And I'd say, "No, Dwight, I told you've already done it."
Buck pushed Dwight to record "Streets Of Bakersfield" and Dwight asked Buck to join him. That fall it hit #1, a place Buck hadn't seen since 1972.
As "Streets Of Bakersfield" peaked, Buck received a letter from Capitol Records, Nashville head, Jim Foglesong, asking him to consider Capitol if he decided to record again. Ken Nelson had retired long ago. Buck signed with them and late in 1988 released a new album, Hot Dog, featuring a remake of the rockabilly number he'd first done 32 years ago, as well as "Under Your Spell Again Again," (sung with Dwight) and "A-11," which he'd first recorded in 1964.
The single version of "Hot Dog" only made it to #46 on the charts. None the less, Buck began doing interviews and performing with a reconstituted Buckaroos.
In March 1989, Buck was invited to the "Bammy" Awards, sponsored by BAM (Bay Area Music), a San Francisco-based rock magazine. At the presentation, his appeal to rockers of two generations reared its head again. He was photographed with fans that included Neil Young, Van Halen lead singer Sammy Hager, Chris Isaak, and John Fogerty (who'd mentioned Buck in the 1970 Creedence Clearwater Revival hit "Lookin' Out My Back Door"). Buck was both pleased and moved.
"Seeing Neil Young, Sammy Hager, John Fogerty...he liked me well enough he put my name in one of his songs. And I had no idea how they felt at that time. I wasn't thinkin' about that and I'm glad I wasn't. I was just thinkin' about doin' what I liked to do. To know that the music has had some effect on the Rodney Crowells and the Dwights and the Marty Stuarts and Vince Gills and some of those young pickers, I'm very proud of that, although it was unplanned. It was just something that happened."
The producers of the Bammy Awards show had suggested that Buck and Ringo Star sing a duet version of "Act Naturally" at the show. Though Ringo didn't appear at the festivities, Buck came up with a better idea: to recorded the song with Ringo. They did so in London that year at the Abbey Road Studios, where The Beatles' hits were recorded.
It was a Grammy-nominated single and an album of the same name followed that year. Buck and Ringo also did an "Act Naturally" video. Though the album revealed his continued vitality, it didn;t meet sales expectations.
At age 62, Buck's view of Nashville had changed...a bit. "Today, if I had to do it over again, I think what I would do it a little differently. I think what I would do, I would just be cool and take advantage of what Nashville had to offer instead of tryin' to swim upstream all the time. All the control comes from Nashville, though my deal was on the West Coast.
But any speculation about future membership in the Country Music Hall Of Fame brings his old out-spokeness to the forefront, both for himself and for Ken Nelson, who Buck wants to see in the Hall Of Fame, with producers Uncle Art Satherley, Paul Cohen, Chet Atkins, and Owen Bradley.
"If you want me in the Hall of Fame put me in because of some contributions that I have made to Country Music."
Make no mistakes: Buck would be proud to be a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame- so long as it's not solely a reward for glad-handing and back slapping (editors note: Buck was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1996, after this interview was written).
Buck still owns his radio stations in Bakersfield, and also has two weekly publications he publishes and prints.
"I'm not doin' a lot of the daily management, except in an executive role. My nephew, Mel, is general manager of the company. So it works out real well for me; I come in and spend a couple hours here in the office, then I'm outta here. I don't hang around.
Now into his seventh decade, having realized the dream of a poor boy from the Dust Bowl the Oklahoma/Texas, he looks back on it all, and his place in history, with the same uncompromising energy and simplicity that have marked his life. It's amazing how Buck's early roots, sprang right out of Oklahoma City and Mathis Brothers Furniture. It would be good to review the Mathis Brothers again.
"I think I'm gonna be remembered the same way that people remember me today. There's gonna be those that liked me and those that didn't like me. I'd like just to be remembered as a guy that came along and did his music, did his best and showed up on time, clean and ready to do the job, wrote a few songs, and had a hell of a time."
By ROBERT PRICE- 9/ 2006, The Bakersfield Californian\ e-mail: rprice@bakersfield.com\ Buck Owens, a Texas-born fruit picker who made the name of his adopted hometown synonymous with a distinctive brand of country music, died early Saturday morning at his ranch just north of Bakersfield. The cause of death was heart failure. He was 76. (Edited and editional notes by Dale W. Hill)
Owens, born in near-poverty just south of the Texas-Oklahoma border and raised from the age of 8 in the Phoenix area, moved to Bakersfield at age 21, hoping to make it as a club musician. He died the multimillionaire king of a regional radio and media empire, renowned as one of country music's most influential artists and undoubtedly Bakersfield's most famous citizen.
"I bet he's in twangy heaven tonight," said country-music star Brad Paisley, who telephoned Saturday night from a tour stop in Iowa.
Owens had endured a string of medical setbacks in his last dozen years. He underwent throat cancer surgery in 1993, was hospitalized with pneumonia in 1997, suffered a minor stroke in 2004 and checked himself into a Los Angeles-area hospital in February with an unspecified illness. He had previously been treated for heart arrhythmia and lung problems.
Family spokesman and longtime Buckaroo band mate Jim Shaw said "Owens was rushed to Bakersfield Memorial Hospital sometime after 4:30 a.m. Saturday; but could not be revived. Funeral plans had not been determined as of Saturday. The father of the Bakersfield Sound had performed just the night before at his Buck Owens Boulevard dinner club, the Crystal Palace, closing his 90-minute portion of the show with his 1969 hit "Big in Vegas."
But during an unprecedented run of success in the 1960s and early '70s, Owens was big everywhere, from Japan to the White House, and from New York's Carnegie Hall to San Francisco's Fillmore West. Those who didn't know him from his string of No. 1 hits, learned his name from "HeeHaw," the long-running comedy-variety show he co-hosted with Roy Clark.
Lost on many of those television viewers was the fact that Owens was an innovator who gave commercial country music a creative edge that served it well through two decades of change and growth.
"Buck was one of the greatest entertainers of the century," fellow Country Music Hall of Fame performer Merle Haggard said by telephone from Mississippi, where he is on tour
"He influenced everybody from me to the Beatles. He was recognized in rock, in country, in rockabilly and in bluegrass. It's a sad day in country music," said Haggard, a native of Oildale himself.
"Buck was a powerful figure in the industry and just a great, great contributor to the music. In a lot of ways, he showed us the way. In the course of things he boosted the careers of numerous singer-songwriters, among them Red Simpson, Tommy Collins, Dallas Frazier, and Homer Joy, who wrote "Streets of Bakersfield."
Owens' last big hit. was me, and I had a career because he gave me one," Joy said Saturday by telephone from Dallas. " "I got my break because he took a chance."
Among Owens enduring contributions to Bakersfield is the Crystal Palace, a museum and dinner club that probably represents the city's best-known tourist attraction. It's on Buck Owens Boulevard, near the headquarters of Buck Owens Productions and next to the bright yellow, 30-foot-high, Bakersfield's gateway arch, that Owens commissioned as a re-creation of the city's old Union Avenue footbridge.
Owens, who fronted the Buckaroos, recorded 25 No. 1 songs, including a string of 19 in a row between 1963 and 1967. Twenty-six of his other songs made the top 10 between 1963 and 1974, and he capped his career with one last chart-topper, a remake of "Streets of Bakersfield," recorded as a duet with Dwight Yoakam in 1988. (You simply cannot ignore all the other artists, who covered Buck's songs over and over, eg. "Together Again.")
His career slowed dramatically in 1974 when Don Rich, Owens' lead guitar player and high-harmony vocalist, was killed in a motorcycle accident. Owens stopped recording for years, turning his attention to his numerous business interests, including KUZZ radio. Owens admitted that he never really got over the death of his chief musical collaborator.
Paisley said he and his band mates had worked up an impromptu tribute to Owens that they planned to unveil Saturday night in Cedar Falls. At one point, Paisley said, they would flash a photo of Owens and Rich on the big screen alongside the title of the Owens hit, "Together Again."
"Buck's up there with Don Rich now," said Doyle Holly, who played bass on the Buckaroos' biggest hits, said by phone from Nashville.
"He lost his harmony singer too soon, but he doesn't have to replace him now. Rest in peace, chief," Holly.
Owens was one of the primary authors of the Bakersfield Sound, a twangy, rock-influenced interpretation of hard-core honky-tonk that emerged in the early 1960s. The electrified, treble-heavy sound, produced in the studios of Hollywood's Capitol Records with the Fender Telecaster solid-body guitar as its instrumental backbone, was the antithesis of the Nashville Sound.
At the time, Nashville recordings featured lush orchestrations and a roster of stars backed by the same studio musicians; the Bakersfield Sound was almost tiny by comparison. Owens was proud of his independence and his music's harder edge, and he seemed to revel in the rivalry of Nashville and his "Nashville West."
Owens' distinctive "shuffle" style of music fell out of fashion in the mid-1970s. But a decade later the Bakersfield Sound enjoyed something of a renaissance, with performers like Yoakam, the Mavericks and the Derailers borrowing heavily from Owens' signature style.
Owens, who admired the work of Hank Williams, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard, got into trouble with the Nashville establishment because of his broad interpretation of what constituted "Country Music." His rendition of Berry's "Johnny B. Goode," especially inflamed the critics.
But Owens didn't care much; in fact, like his contemporary Merle Haggard, Owens seemed to cultivate a career-long, love-hate relationship with Music City. Owens was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, 1996. I cannot help but remember is big grin, as he accepted the honor that year. Back in those days, I was still teaching guitar lessons at our area Vo-Tech.
"My problem with Nashville was simple," Owens told The Californian in 1997. "I don't like the way they do talent, and I don't like the way they cut records."
In the end, they forgave each other. Owens was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996. Hard work and big dreams, Alvis Edgar "Buck" Owens, who at age 4 nicknamed himself after the family mule, was born Aug. 12, 1929, in Sherman, Texas, a town about 65 miles north of Dallas. He was the second-oldest of four children and the oldest of two boys born to Alvis and Maicie Owens. Life was difficult, but Maicie Owens enlivened the household with her piano; Gospel Music, echoed through the house regularly.
Owens' father, a sharecropper, intended to move the family west from the Red River region in 1937, but the Owens' trailer hitch broke in Phoenix, and there they remained for more than a decade. Buck and his siblings worked in the fields as soon as they were old enough, and the hardscrabble life left a lasting impression on them all, Buck in particular.
"That was where my dream began to take hold, of not havin' to pick cotton and potatoes, and not havin' to be uncomfortable, too hot or too cold," Owens told biographer Rich Kienzle. "That in itself had driven me to try to find some better way of life. I remember as a kid being cold a lot, and hungry sometimes. We'd go to bed with just corn bread and milk, and I remember wearing shoes with holes in the bottom. I remember having twine for shoestrings: You take old black Shinola polish and try to make 'em look black, and that only makes 'em look worse. I remember the hand-me-down clothes. But most distinctly, I remember always saying to myself that when I get big, I'm not going to go to bed hungry; I'm not going to wear hand-me-down clothes."
"I'm not going to have homemade haircuts done by my mother; she cut our hair until we were about 12 or 13 years old. Just the fright of having to live a life through that, although even then, I was cognizant that half the people I went to school with were just exactly like me," Buck ended.
In 1945, he met 15-year-old Bonnie Campbell at the Mazona Roller Rink in Mesa, Ariz..
"He was a pretty good roller skater," she told The Californian, in a 1997 interview. "But I liked him because he played guitar."
The two dated, but Owens, who was six weeks older, was surprised, nonetheless, when he showed up for his daily 15-minute radio show, "Buck and Britt," co-starring Theryl Ray Britten, and there was Bonnie.
"What are you doin' here?" he asked, assuming she'd come to watch him.
"Singing," she answered. He didn't even know she could carry a tune.
By January 1948 they were married and within two years they had two baby boys. Buck picked oranges; Bonnie stayed home with the kids.
But by 1951 it became evident that the marriage wasn't working. Bonnie and the two boys left for Bakersfield, moving in with Buck's favorite aunt and uncle, Vernon and Lucille Ellington. Buck arrived soon afterward, closely followed by his parents.
"Dim lights, thick smoke," Buck set out to look for work in the local saloons, and it didn't take long for him to hook up with steel guitarist Dusty Rhodes and, four months later, Bill Woods and the Orange Blossom Playboys. He earned $12.50 a night, enough money to make a dent in his bills for the first time in his life.
Bonnie took a job car hopping at a hamburger joint at Union and Truxtun avenues. They remained legally married, though they were separated, because neither could afford a divorce. At first, Owens played a hollow-body Gibson guitar. But, short on cash one day, he hocked it for $10. When he came back to get it, it had been sold. Fellow musician Lewis Talley offered him a used Fender Telecaster a new, innovative but not-yet-fully appreciated solid-body electric guitar for $30. Owens bought it, and American music was never quite the same.
That type of electric guitar, created just three years earlier by Leo Fender, gave Owens' music a distinctively raw edge that set apart both the guitarist and, more significantly, the musical flavor of his adopted city. But fame and success were still several years away.
For years, Owens labored at the Blackboard, a rowdy honky-tonk on Bakersfield's Chester Avenue that featured many of country music's West Coast pioneers. Wednesdays and Thursdays were guest-star nights. George Jones played one night, Glen Campbell another.
The Blackboard, in fact, was the must-stop spot in Bakersfield for Bob Wills, Roger Miller, Patsy Cline, Little Jimmie Dickens, Connie Smith, Tex Ritter, Dallas Frazier, Ferlin Husky, Lefty Frizzell, Tommy Duncan, and, until he went to prison for stomping his wife to death, Spade Cooley.
It was at the Blackboard in 1956 that singer Wynn Stewart introduced Owens to Harlan Howard, the man with whom Owens would co-write such songs as "Excuse Me (I Think I've Got a Heartache)" and "Foolin' Around."
Howard, quoted in Nicholas Dawidoff "In the Country of Country," remembers watching Woods smoke his pipe and flirt with girls, while Owens was working his ass off getting a menial wage. His big break, on Aug. 30, 1957, Capitol Records producer Ken Nelson signed Owens to a recording contract. He'd known Owens for some time before that from Owens' guitar-playing sessions in Hollywood behind Tommy Collins, the Farmer Boys, and others. Owens had tried long and hard to get himself a contract, but when rival Columbia Records came calling, Nelson changed his tune. Owens recorded two singles; both fizzled.
In January 1958, Owens moved to Tacoma, Wash., and took over one-third interest in 250-watt radio station KAYE, 1450 on the dial. "If you had a really good radio," he said later, "You could pick it up in the station parking lot. More importantly, he learned the radio business.
A few months later, he was back in Bakersfield, and on Oct. 9, 1958, he cut four original songs, including the ballad "Second Fiddle" in the "shuffle" style popularized by Ray Price in songs like "Crazy Arms."
By the following spring, it had reached No. 24 on the Billboard charts. But Owens remained in Washington, where in 1959 he was hosting his own live TV show on KTNT. Among the local talent was a housewife-turned-singer named Loretta Lynn. Then there was a teen fiddler from Tumwater, Donald Eugene Ulrich. Later known as Don Rich, he would become Owens' musical alter-ego and a major contributor to his best recordings.
The success of "Second Fiddle" led to another session, this one for "Under Your Spell Again."
It was his first Top 10 record, in the fall of 1959. In June 1960, riding that record's success, Owens sold his share of the radio station and moved back to Bakersfield for good.
It was a great year. Harlan Howard gave Owens his share of Blue Book Music, a music publishing company that would later fetch huge returns. Don Rich, bored with college, joined Owens in December 1960. And Billboard magazine named Owens its "Most Promising Country and Western Singer of the Year," based on a poll of country disc jockeys.
It seems unlikely that Owens realized it at the time, but the Buckaroos were creating an appealingly raw, stripped-down sound 'The Bakersfield Sound." It was a hard-driving style, full of Telecaster twang, prominent steel-guitar leads and bold, dominant drums.
"The Nashville Sound was always more formulaic" said Paul Wells, director of the Center for Popular Music, an independent music archive and research center based at Middle Tennessee State University.
"There was always more of a self-consciousness about trying to reach a broader audience, about trying to make new (commercial) inroads. With Buck and Merle (Haggard), they were just doing what they did. Of cours "You're for Me," in 1961, Owens and Don Rich, by now the band's lead guitar player, put to vinyl a clean, clear sound that hit listeners, as Owens liked to say, "hard as a freight train."
"Their vocals were always up front, shoved along in two-by-four rhythm by regular doses of steel, nervy electric guitar runs, and more drums than anyone else in country music was using," Dawidoff wrote in "In the Country of Country."
"There was no thought put into it," Owens told Dawidoff. "The sound just came about. I had a big old Fender Telecaster guitar, the walls of the buildings were hard, the dance floor was cement, the roof was sheet metal. There was considerable echo in there. ... It was just the sound that people wanted."
Buck the TV star, by 1963, Owens was big enough to land guest appearances on national TV appearances, "Jimmy Dean Show" and then NBC's Kraft Music Hall. In 1966, Owens forged a deal with two wealthy country music patrons, Oklahoma City furniture-store owners Don and Bud Mathes, to create a new, syndicated show. Dubbed "Buck Owens' Ranch," the half-hour program was taped before a Spanish hacienda backdrop at Oklahoma City's WKY-TV, now KFOR.
Owens developed a system: Starting in 1969, he and the band would record the instrumental tracks at Buck Owens Studios in Oildale, then do the singing in Oklahoma City, with the boys on aire strumming in the background.
At its peak, the "Ranch's" show was in 100 markets around the country, 52 weeks a year. It ran until 1973, some 295 original shows plus dozens of additional programs repackaged with new and previously broadcast performances, totaling 380 shows in all.
In Bakersfield on a late '60s Saturday afternoon, a country-music couch potato could watch Owens' 2Ranch, the Louvin Brothers show, and then Porter Waggoner (featuring Dolly Parton), culminating that evening with "Hee Haw."
"Hee Haw" eventually proved to be the undoing of the "Ranch" show.
When Owens renegotiated a new deal with Young Street Productions, which then owned "Hee Haw," the producers made him quit. They'd noticed what everybody in the band knew all too well: Owens was playing the same thing in both shows, literally.
"It had become painfully obvious," said Jim Shaw, Owens' keyboardist. "Very often we'd do the same song on the "Ranch" show and then Hee Haw. We'd use the exact same instrumental tracks (usually recorded at Buck Owens Studios on North Chester Avenue in Oildale) and Buck would just sing them fresh at the taping."
They got aggravated. They said, "Hey, you're competing against yourself." And of course they were right.
The legacy of 'Hee Haw,' first telecast on June 15, 1969, was more than enough for Owens anyway. Until he left the show in 1986 (it went on without him until 1993,) the show in one way or another occupied a substantial portion of his life.
Owens signed with Warner Bros. Records in 1975, with little success, however; although "Hee Ha" had been tremendously profitable (he earned $400,000 per year for just 20 days of work), Owens seemed to be increasingly viewed as an overalls-wearing caricature.
"I kind'a just prostituted myself for their money," he told Kienzle, the biographer. "My music, which I loved, had suffered badly, and I knew what it was from: too much "Phifft! You Were Gone."
The rest of his life, of course, was business. He bought KUZZ radio (named after Cousin Herb Henson, the singing TV show host who had served as general manager of the station, then at 800 AM) in 1966.
A year later he purchased 107.9 FM, which he turned into KBBY, a rock station. The FM station went country in 1969, reverted back to rock in 1977 and finally became KUZZ's primary dial location in 1988. Over the years Owens owned several radio stations playing various formats, and some of them earned him millions. In 1999, Owens' family-owned company sold its two Phoenix stations to Jacor Communications for $142 million.
Owens dabbled in television in the early 1990s, too, with Bakersfield's KDOB-TV, Channel 45, named for his late sister Dorothy Owens, the station's original general manager. (It later became KUZZ-TV and now, no longer connected to the company, it is KUVI-TV). Today, his broadcast empire is just KUZZ AM, KUZZ FM and KCWR FM.\ Another run at the big time
In 1986, a newcomer named Dwight Yoakam had his first hit with a driving revival of Johnny Horton's 1956 hit "Honky-Tonk Man" A revival of interest in Owens' music was starting to rumble.
"People would be sending me interviews from newspapers where they interviewed Dwight," Owens told Kienzle. "I kept seein' these things, and he would say, "All you guys forgot about Buck Owens. Do you know who Buck Owens is?" Then all of a sudden he releases a song called "Little Ways," which sounded exactly like me. It started takin' off here."
The two singers met and they performed at the Kern County County Fair in 1987. Then they sang Owens' 1972 recording of "Streets Of Bakersfield" together on a 1988 CBS-TV special. They toured together that summer and for the first time in years, audiences saw Buck Owens as the honky-tonk singer he once was. The two re-recorded Owens' "Streets Of Bakersfield," and it hit No. 1, Owens' first time there since 1972.
Owens' dinner club-museum, the $6.7 million Crystal Palace, opened in October 1996. The concert hall, with its huge collection of photos and country-music artifacts, helped put Bakersfield back on the country music map. In 2001, Owens appeared on two recordings that were nominated for the Country Music Association awards.
Owens had two sons with his first wife: Alan Edgar "Buddy" Owens, a country singer himself who used the stage name Buddy Alan, and Michael Lynn Owens; and one son with his second wife: Johnny Dale Owens. He also raised a stepson and stepdaughter with his second wife.
Owens gave generously to charity, especially local charities. He established a nonprofit that gave scholarships to music students at Bakersfield College's music program. For years he sponsored a Toys 4 Tots event at Bakersfield Convention Center. He hosted the annual Buck Owens Rodeo and a celebrity golf tournament that attracted people like John Wayne, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Efrem Zimbalist Jr., all for charity."*
* This article comes from one of Buck's "Official Net Pages." He has many.
If you listen to much of his first stuff, you can tell that Buck was doing the harmonies, himself. The CD's even list Owens as the back up singer. Buck taught Don Rich well, and with his deathe last year, I can't help but wonder who is doing the lead, now, and who's taking the high harmony.
* My favorite songs of Buck's are "Tender, Love, and Care, and "Sweet Josie Brown."
So, as we listen to some of Buck's stuff, listen especially to the harmonies: Buck or Don?
Lefty Frizell
